


Something to Talk About

by Mireille



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Teachers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-10-14 13:52:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17509814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: The art room next to the auto shop has been empty since Tony started teaching here. That's about to change.





	1. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Less a meet-cute and more a meet-and-yell-at-each-other. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has already been completely written and partially revised, so I should be able to keep to a regular posting schedule. New chapters will generally go up on Tuesdays (most likely in the morning, US-time).

****

His first year in the classroom, Tony lost count of the number of veteran teachers who had told him not to smile until Halloween, at the absolute earliest. You had to start out hard-ass, they said, much tougher than you wanted to be, so that by the end of the year, you still had enough control over the situation that you could continue getting things done in your classroom.

Tony had decided that advice was complete bullshit and had ignored it that year and every subsequent year, but he was starting to rethink it now. 

Not with the kids. Definitely not with the kids. Being a hard-ass disciplinarian would get you nowhere with most of them, but school didn't start until Monday and the students were nowhere around. 

But if the asshole who had taken over the classroom next to his--the classroom that had been unused for the entire seven years Tony had been teaching here, which meant it was perfectly reasonable for him to have taken it over, thank you very much--thought he could get away with dragging all of Tony's shit out into the hall, jumbling it all together and probably fucking it up, he was going to have another think coming. 

Especially since Tony had been on his way down here to get all that stuff out of the new art teacher's way. It was 7:45 AM on the first day of pre-planning, for God's sake. They didn't even have to be here for another forty-five minutes. Could this guy not wait an hour? Shouldn't he have been up in the office signing paperwork or getting a tour of the cafeteria or whatever the hell new teachers should be doing? 

Theoretically, Tony had been thrilled yesterday when he'd stopped by to pick up his keys--he'd wanted to be able to come in early and make a start on getting things organized in the shop before the snoozefest of meetings and motivational speakers began--and Ms. Hill, his favorite of the assistant principals, had told him they'd got the grant they'd applied for, the one that would fund an art teacher for at least three years, with a chance of renewal. Tony might have taught auto mechanics, but he was all for a strong arts program. Or any arts program at all. Kids needed outlets for their talents, even if those talents weren't strictly academic. 

But right at the moment, looking at the pile of crap that was not only in the hall, but blocking his way to the shop so that he couldn't even start putting it away, he was personally and vehemently opposed to this douchebag, whoever he was. (The temporary sign stuck to the door said "Mr. S. Rogers," and Tony was definitely going to start humming "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," every chance he got.)

Tony started kicking boxes aside, trying to clear a path to his door so that he could at least get the hall cleared out before the morning faculty meeting. "God damn it," he grumbled loudly, "this isn't how I wanted to spend the first day of the school year."

Then the door to the art room opened, and a mountain walked out. 

Maybe not _technically_ a mountain. Not even, strictly speaking, an abnormally large human. But the guy who'd stepped out of the art room was definitely not Tony's mental image of an art teacher: he was tall, broad-shouldered, with bulging muscles pretty much everywhere Tony looked, although he was trying not to look _everywhere_. Whoever he was, he looked like he ate art teachers for breakfast. 

Tony was not a tiny man--compact, maybe, but not _tiny_ \--and he did enough physical labor that he was in pretty good shape for a man his age, but at the sight of (presumably) Mr. S. Rogers, he vowed that he was going to start hitting the gym a lot more often. 

"Hey, watch your language," the mountain said. "This is a school." 

Tony rolled his eyes. "Stay out of the teacher's lounge on parent conference days, if one 'God damn' gets your panties in a wad," he said. "Also, the kids are going to say much worse, I promise you." He finished clearing a path to his door and unlocked it. 

"Is this your stuff?" the guy asked, waving at the assorted crap piled in the hallway. 

"Probably," Tony said. "At least, what I recognize is mine. Which reminds me, who the hell do you think you are to just dump it in the hall like that?" 

"You left it in my classroom." Okay, definitely Rogers, then. Great. That was going to make this year _so_ awesome. 

"I left it in the empty room next door to mine," Tony corrected him, "because nobody's been using it since before I started teaching here. And the school year hasn't started yet. I was on my way in to clear it out for you, but since you decided you couldn't wait, _you_ can move it into the shop." 

"I don't have time for that," Rogers said. "I have an art room that hasn't been used in about a decade to get ready for classes on Monday. I haven't even had a chance to order supplies yet." 

"You should have thought of that before you started flinging engine parts all over the hall." He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "Just put them along the wall at the front of the room. I'll put everything away. Thanks!" he added with a giant fake smile. 

He'd mostly expected Rogers to ignore him and go back into the art room, but instead, he picked up a carton of stuff Tony had been using for his Small Engine Repair classes and lugged it into the shop.

Tony could have grabbed another box and helped him, but he was too damn annoyed at the moment. Instead, he leaned against the wall and watched Rogers work. 

It was a pity the guy was such a giant pain in the ass, he thought, because he was going to improve the scenery around the school so much. It wasn't just the muscles. It wasn't even the general (perfect, like gay-porn levels of perfect) appearance of the body. There was that, and the handsome face, and the general aura of well-scrubbed boy-scoutness that probably really did it for some guys. 

Okay, that really did it for Tony. 

The guy was probably married, with five kids under five and a wife who'd been a cheerleader at the same high school where he'd been the star quarterback, and it was a horrible idea to lust after a co-worker anyway. And he really was a pain in the ass, though that was getting a lot harder to believe when Rogers was moving shit into Tony's classroom without any more complaint. 

Maybe he should just shut up and enjoy the eye-candy. 

"Are you going to help me," Rogers said when he came out to pick up the third box, "or are you just going to stand there and watch?" 

Tony shrugged. "Figured I'd stand here and look pretty," he said. "It's what I'm best at." 

Rogers rolled his eyes and shoved a box at Tony. "Come on," he said. "It's your stuff." 

"Aw, but you're so big and butch." He fluttered his eyelashes theatrically at Rogers, figuring he might as well find out right now how careful he needed to be around his new neighbor. It wasn't like he was going to be talking about his sex life in any detail at work, but if he was teaching next door to a homophobic jackass, it was better to know now, when he could play the whole thing off as a joke. 

Rogers just raised an eyebrow and flexed his bicep at Tony. "It's your stuff," he repeated, "and you're not that pretty." He waited until Tony started lugging the box into his classroom before picking up another one. 

They got the stuff moved out of the hall fairly quickly, and by the time the last box was in his room, Tony was starting to feel like he might have judged Rogers too harshly. 

Apparently, he wasn't the only one. "So..." Rogers said, "I feel like we might have got off on the wrong foot." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Steve Rogers, the new art teacher." 

Yeah, okay, it'd be easier if he got along with the only other teacher whose classroom was on this hallway. He shook Rogers' hand. "Tony Stark. Auto mechanics, obviously." 

"That's what I would have guessed," Rogers said, looking around, past the rows of work tables to the two repair bays waiting for the used car lot across town to deliver the cars they'd be working on this year. "That or possibly Victorian poetry." 

Tony laughed in spite of himself. "That's the second semester." 

Okay, he thought as Rogers started laughing too, maybe having someone in the classroom next door wasn't going to be so bad after all.

****

Having someone in the classroom next door was _terrible_ , and it was still three days before school actually started.

"You threw them out?" Tony demanded. It was difficult to glower up at someone, especially someone who could bench-press you, but by god, he was going to do it, because this musclebound asshole had gone too far this time. 

"Stark, it was a box of assorted filthy crap that looked like bad attempts at modern sculpture, plus a box of drawings. In the back of my storage closet. Given how long it's been since there was an actual art program here, I figured I didn't need to hang onto samples of student work. Any students from back then would be out of college by now, at the very least." 

"Yeah, well, if one of my kids hadn't come by to see me and spotted his robotics project _in the dumpster_..." There wasn't a robotics program, or anything similar, at the school. The last electronics teacher had quit in February, two years ago, because he got an offer from private industry, where he could make three times the money and never have to wait four hours before he got the chance to take a piss. Since that guy was the fifth in a string of teachers who had quit in much the same way, Fury had hired a long-term sub to finish out the year and then quietly discontinued the program. 

But Tony knew a little--okay, a lot--about electronics (engineering majors had been like potato chips; he hadn't been able to stop at just one) and didn't care how many kids hung out in his classroom after school, so the kids who wanted to take part in the statewide robotics competition had started gravitating to his room. There were tools and welding equipment and safety gear, so it made sense. 

He hadn't paid much attention to what the kids had done with their stuff, especially the abandoned attempts that hadn't worked out, though. They'd apparently shoved them in boxes and stuck them in the art room closet. 

It made sense that Rogers hadn't wanted to keep them, but he'd _thrown them out_ , and the only reason Tony even knew was that Ned Leeds had stopped by to explain why he wasn't taking Auto Mechanics II this year (what Tony didn't know was why he'd been in Auto Mechanics I, except maybe "because there wasn't anything else remotely related to electronics or engineering on offer right now") and he'd spotted some of his stuff on top of the dumpster. 

"I thought it was junk!" Rogers said. "Really old junk. Leftover junk. You hadn't put anything in the closet, from what I knew, so why would I think it was yours?" 

Of course Tony hadn't put anything in the closet. He didn't have a key to the closet. (He technically didn't have a key to the classroom, either, but his key worked in the door.) The kids hadn't had a key to the closet either, but that kind of small detail hadn't ever stopped a teenager. 

"You can't just waltz in here and take over!" he snapped. "There's a system! There's something called _trust_ , which believe me is not always easy to get with these kids, and then you walk in and fuck that all up because you want two square feet of shelf space!"

Rogers glared at him. "I can't just 'waltz in and take over' my own classroom? That's rich, coming from the guy who's spent years doing exactly that! Also, seriously, does Dr. Fury know you swear this much at school?" 

"I never did, until you showed up. And I understand you wanted your space back. That's fair. But you knew I was storing stuff in your room, so you couldn't have just asked me?" 

"You weren't even in your room! And believe me, I'd know, because when you're in there, you're constantly blasting music loud enough I can hear it as soon as I walk in the building!" Tony would have been prepared to swear that the expression on Rogers' face was a patent-pending "I'm not angry, just disappointedTM" expression.

God damn it, couldn't he even get mad like a normal person? Also, couldn't he _not_ have a reasonable complaint that Tony felt a little guilty about? He'd forgotten that there was someone next door. He was used to being down here by himself, in the afterthought annex built on to a building that had already been an afterthought to the main school building. He _liked_ it that way. 

But he wouldn't have turned the music up quite so loud if he'd remembered there was someone else there to hear. 

"And you couldn't have asked me to turn it down? You have to just go around being a martyr and then throwing it in my face when I come to you with a perfectly valid complaint?" 

"Uh..." a third voice, quieter and distinctly nervous, cut in. Tony only halfway registered it and immediately ignored it. 

"You couldn't have asked me to check in the closet for your kids' leftover projects?" Rogers demanded. 

"Uh, Mr. Stark?" 

Tony waved a hand impatiently at the direction of the voice; then he went on yelling at Rogers. "How could I have done that if I didn't even know they might be there?" 

"Mr. Stark!" The voice was insistent enough that it finally penetrated all the way into his awareness, and Tony stopped yelling at Rogers and turned to look at the kid in the doorway. 

"Oh, it's you, Peter," he said. "Come to tell me you're not taking the next mechanics class? I saw Ned earlier today." They wouldn't get their class rosters until Friday morning, so he was just guessing, but the college-prep kids sometimes had a lot of problems fitting a vocational elective in. Plus, those two had been inseparable last year, so Tony figured where one went, the other one did. 

"No, sir!" Peter Parker waved a piece of paper in Tony's direction. "I took a history class at the junior college this summer, and Mr. Wilson just signed off so it would count as my world history credit. I have room to take your class this year! I just need you to sign my schedule change. I was headed to your room, but--" The kid shrugged. "I heard yelling and figured it was you," he said with a grin. "It usually is."

"Yeah, well, if you listened more, I wouldn't have to yell so much," Tony said, pulling a pen out of his pocket and grabbing the schedule form. Peter was a good kid, one of the ones who was really let down by the limited course offerings here, too. A real electronics course, a computer class that focused on something other than how to use Microsoft Office--those were what he ought to be taking, not small-engine repair and auto mechanics. 

Still, learning his way around a soldering iron and a set of wrenches was going to serve him well if he went into some branches of engineering--and hell, it wasn't bad information even if he went into theoretical rather than applied science. Never hurt to be able to fix your car. Never hurt to know if the mechanics were bullshitting you, even if you didn't want to fix your own car. 

Plus, Tony liked the kid. Well, he liked most--not all, definitely not, but most--of his kids, but Peter was one of his current favorites. 

Peter had taken the paper back and was looking curiously around the art room, and at Rogers. "Guess we can't use this for the robotics competition this year, huh?" he said to Tony. 

"I'll find you some space in the shop," Tony said. "Or somewhere. I know they turned the electronics classroom into a computer lab for the business department, but maybe..." He shrugged. "I'll take care of it," he promised. "And this is the new art teacher, Mr. Rogers," he added. 

Peter snickered under his breath, which demonstrated both that he had an excellent foundation in pop culture and that Tony was right to like the kid. 

Tony went on. "Rogers, this is Peter Parker. I have no idea why he takes auto shop, since he's more of a science geek--"

"Hey," Peter protested, "who are you calling a geek? You--" 

"--but, as I was saying, I'm lucky to have him in class."

"Nice to meet you, Peter. Are you interested in art?"

Peter looked from Tony to Rogers and back again. The kid wasn't dumb; he'd obviously sized up the tension between them--well, the yelling would've been a big clue. 

And, apparently, the kid was unnecessarily loyal. "No, sir. Like Mr. Stark said, I'm interested in science." 

Tony shook his head. "Take an art class if you have room, kid," he said. "You might as well try a little of everything while you have time." He grinned. "If I hadn't decided to try new things, I'd never have wound up in the glamorous world of public education." 

Peter frowned at him. "I don't want to be rude, but if that's what happens when you try new things, I think I'll just stick to science." He glanced at his phone. "And I gotta go. My aunt was supposed to be here to pick me up five minutes ago, but there was a line to see Mr. Wilson. See you Monday!" 

Peter took off, and Tony looked over at Rogers, his earlier irritation defused by the interruption. "So, yeah," he said. "They're not all like that--about half my kids are pains in the ass on their good days--but kids like Peter more than make up for it." 

"That's what I'm hoping," Rogers agreed. Then, sounding a little reluctant, he added, "If I find any more stuff I can't identify, I'll let you have a look before dumping it." 

"Thanks." Tony could afford to be magnanimous in victory. "It's not even because I want it. It's just that the kids sometimes get attached to their work. You'd think they'd take it home with them, but..." He shrugged. "Kids." 

"Yeah," Rogers said. "I get it. I'm just swamped, and half my supplies aren't here yet and this is completely different from student-teaching and--"

"And breathe, Rogers," Tony said. "You're going to be fine. But if you think it'll help, I'll even turn down the music a little." 

"Gee, Stark," Rogers muttered, "you're a real prince." 

"Five out of ten for sarcasm," Tony said, "but keep trying. The sassy thing is working for you."

****

Why the hell did he work in a high school? Why had he _ever_ thought that spending his day surrounded by teenagers was a good idea?

And for the love of God, why had he agreed to let them hang out in his room during lunch--all the lunch periods, this year, because his planning period was in the middle of the day--instead of having a blissful oasis of kid-free time? 

Well. He knew the answer to that one: he'd wound up with an assortment of kids--some in his classes, some not--who seemed to think the auto shop at lunch was the perfect haven. And given that some of them had a crappy time the rest of the day, he wasn't going to tell them they _couldn't_ hang out here. 

Even if that meant that Peter Parker and his friends were right there, annoying the shit out of him while Tony tried to eat his sandwich in peace. He hadn't even ever _taught_ that Michelle kid; why was she always _here_? And why had she decided over the past two weeks that she had been appointed by God or Destiny or Tony's really terrible luck to play Cupid for the poor saps who were supposed to be giving her an education? 

"Don't you think Mr. Rogers is really good-looking?" she asked. Since during this lunch period, the only kids in the room were her, Peter, and Ned, Tony assumed this was directed at one of them, but they both continued eating their lunch placidly. 

At least she was asking it _today_. Rogers had started coming in during this lunch period--for a change in scenery, he said, though he could have just gone to the cafeteria or the teachers' lounge and made Tony's life easier--and he wouldn't have put it past her to have asked her question right in front of him. But today he wasn't here, and so Michelle was just being annoying, not outright embarrassing. 

"Mr. Stark?" she said. "I asked you a question." 

"You were talking to me?" He shook his head. "That's a completely inappropriate question to ask a teacher." 

"Isn't 'Can you really sober up by taking a cold shower?' also a completely inappropriate question to ask a teacher?" Peter said helpfully--the little shit. "Because I think you did fifteen minutes on that one yesterday in class. Not to mention last year when you explained that you really could get a girl pregnant even if you have sex standing up." 

Well, yes, he had, because some of these kids were passing around the same stupid bullshit they were passing around when Tony was fifteen, and these kids _had the Internet and could look it up_ but would rather believe something that their best friend's brother's friend's girlfriend told them. 

"That's completely different," he said. 

"But you keep telling us there's nothing wrong with not being straight," Michelle pointed out. 

Ugh, why did he even try to be a decent supportive adult? He should have known it would come back to bite him one day. "And there's not," he said, firmly. 

He had no idea exactly how it had become known a few years ago that Mr. Stark in the auto shop didn't let people pick on the queer kids--well, probably because he hadn't let anybody pick on the queer kids, but what the hell else was he supposed to do?--and he might possibly have been spotted a few times out on a date by kids who'd used a fake ID to get somewhere they shouldn't have been. Anyway, the whole administration knew, and nobody cared as long as Tony behaved like a mostly-professional mostly-adult, just like the rest of the faculty. 

On the other hand, discussing whether or not the art teacher was cute was neither professional nor adult. And it was also not something that he wanted to do. Not with Peter and his friends, not with Rhodey last Saturday night after he'd vented about how fucking _annoying_ Rogers was, not ever. 

Besides, Rogers was not cute. Puppies were cute. Babies were cute. Ex-soldiers--he'd learned from the kids that Rogers had been in the army before becoming an art teacher, which was a weird enough career path to be true--with thighs like tree trunks were not cute. They might, possibly, be hot enough to be a wet dream made flesh, but they were not _cute_. 

"So why won't you answer the question?"

Okay, Peter Parker was no longer his favorite student. Out of the hundred and eighty-two students Tony had this year, he was currently number one hundred ninety-six, and someone should have drowned him at birth. Or at least duct-taped his mouth permanently shut.

"Fine," Tony said, setting down his mug of coffee. "The answer is no. No, I don't think Mr. Rogers is cute. Satisfied?" 

And oh, _fuck_ his life, because _of course_ Rogers had come through the open door (Tony might be casual about letting students hang out with him, but he wasn't dumb and he kept the doors open unless there was a class full of kids in there) and _of course_ he'd heard that without hearing all the harassment beforehand--they usually kept it to some quiet giggling and whispering when Rogers was around, so he might not know how obnoxious they could be--and so _of course_ Tony just looked like an asshole. 

Rogers just raised an eyebrow. "This is revenge for that time I told you you weren't that pretty, isn't it?" He pulled a plastic chair out from the table in the corner and set it next to Tony's desk, then put his lunch bag on the desk. "I'm crushed. I might be hiding my pain well, but I am definitely crushed." 

Okay, maybe Tony hadn't looked like that much of an an asshole. Hell, maybe they'd been pestering Rogers in their spare time, and he was completely onto their game. 

"You told Mr. Stark he wasn't pretty?" Peter asked, then added--after getting very weird looks from both Ned and Michelle--"That just seems kind of random. And mean." 

"Nah," Tony said. "I told him I was too pretty to carry boxes. I deserved it." He grinned at Rogers, who was taking the sensible route by unpacking his lunch bag and pretending he wasn't part of this conversation. 

"Yeah, you did," Rogers said at last. "And you're really not." 

"And you're not cute, so we're even." 

Rogers looked down at himself for a moment. "No, I'm definitely not cute." He grinned back at Tony. 

Oh yeah. Not cute, but definitely hot. 

There were a few minutes of peace as people ate--Rogers asked him about what to expect on his upcoming "volunteer" (as in, "we expect all faculty to volunteer their time, unpaid, for the good of the school") shift selling tickets at the football game that night, the kids talked about a trigonometry quiz they were having that afternoon, but nobody annoyed Tony, and that was peaceful enough for him--but it was too good to last. 

"You should come to the game tonight," said the spawn of Satan (officially known as Michelle). "The marching band has a great half-time show prepared, don't you, guys?"

"What?" Peter blinked at her. 

"The marching band. Tonight. At the football game. Weren't you and Ned saying you hoped Mr. Stark would come and see you?" 

"No," Ned said. "Why would we say that?" 

Peter was obviously a little quicker on the uptake, and had made the connection between Rogers' ticket-selling shift and Michelle thinking he should suddenly start supporting the marching band in a way other than buying overpriced off-brand chocolate bars twice a year. "Because it's important for teachers to show interest in their students' achievements outside the classroom," he said. 

Tony rolled his eyes. "You sound like a faculty meeting, Parker." 

"Also our halftime show really is cool, Mr. Stark. It's really old music--like, from the nineties--so you'll probably like it." 

"....and there go your college recommendations," Tony said, grinning at him. 

"I don't need those until next year anyway," Peter pointed out. 

"Come on," said Michelle. "The bell's going to ring soon, and I want to go to my locker." The three of them gathered their trash up, picked up their book bags, and took off, leaving a very awkward silence in their wake. 

"So," Rogers said finally. "This ticket-selling thing. How badly does it suck? Be honest." 

Tony shrugged. "It's not too hot today, so it won't be too bad," he said. "And it's not raining. Wear bug spray; the mosquitoes can be pretty thick out there after the sun goes down. You only have to help out through the first quarter; after that, the Booster Club takes over since it's mostly handling people going back out to their cars for a sweater. It's considered bad form to actually leave, though, so I hope you like football." Of course Rogers liked football. Guys who looked like Rogers usually lived for football. 

"It's okay," Rogers said. "I don't have that many football players in my classes, but there are a couple, so I'd stay anyway." 

"Well, we're supposed to have a less-bad-than-usual team this year." He shrugged again. "I pay attention because of the kids, but it's not really my sport." And he hadn't had the heart to tell the kids that there was no way he'd be at the game tonight, because he was going to be watching an auto race and explaining for the tenth time to his old friends that he _liked_ teaching and didn't miss racing, even if there was still a spot for him on a pit crew if he wanted it. That was a long time ago, and this was where he belonged. 

"At least the school doesn't seem to be totally football crazy?" 

"We don't win enough to be totally football crazy." He grinned. "We're terrible at every sport." They were basically terrible, period, but Tony liked it here. Fury was fairly tolerant of Tony being, well, himself, and the kids were great--when they weren't driving him totally nuts, anyway. 

"So, see you at the game?" Rogers said, glancing at his watch and starting to pick up his stuff. 

"Not tonight," Tony said. "Plans." 

And neither of them was disappointed about that, because contrary to what a handful of kids who desperately needed a hobby might have thought, lunch and a few minutes before and after school were _more_ than enough time spent in one another's company.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope to see you back next week! (FYI: I value comments, kudos, and people who read without saying anything. I tend to only reply to comments once a week, but I do reply.) 
> 
> **Next week:** Tony finds a way to get the kids off his back. It doesn't quite go as expected.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony thinks he knows how to get the kids off his back. It doesn't go the way he was expecting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented, left kudos, bookmarked, subscribed, or just read the fic--and thanks for coming back for chapter 2!

****

"Okay," Tony said, walking into the art room without knocking. "The kids are getting ridiculous." In the week since they'd tried to get Tony to go to the football game just for the purpose of spending more time with Rogers, they'd stepped up their--well, they'd probably say they'd stepped up their game, but Tony preferred to think of it as stepping up their level of complete insanity.

Rogers looked up from where he was setting out supplies for tomorrow's lessons. "What did they do now?" 

"The campaign of teacher harassment continues," Tony said, and then realized that he and Rogers had never actually discussed that. Maybe Rogers hadn't even realized that it was an ongoing campaign; they did save all their worst "helpfulness," as far as Tony could tell, for Tony alone. "'Mr. Stark, are you _sure_ you don't think Mr. Rogers is cute?'" he quoted, in a sing-song voice.

Rogers chuckled. "I thought you made it clear a few days ago that you don't." 

"Yeah, for some reason the little monsters don't believe me." He grinned at Rogers. "So. Anyway. It's completely inappropriate and I keep telling them that you're probably straight--" 

Rogers cleared his throat. "Yeah, you should probably stop telling them that." 

"What? It's _totally_ inappropriate. I mean, true, I let them ask me all kinds of inappropriate crap, but--" His brain caught up to his mouth then. "Not that part, huh?" 

"Not that part," Rogers confirmed. 

"Okay, I'll drop that particular argument. Also, that makes this next bit a lot easier. Like I was saying, it's inappropriate and I keep trying to discourage them, but apparently they're not going to leave me alone until I do this, so do you want to go out sometime? _Not_ a football game, unless you really want to. Dinner, maybe? Somewhere without a bunch of teenagers around?" 

It was clearly the best way to get the kids to drop the subject. He'd go out with Rogers one time, they'd have a perfectly pleasant but boring evening--or possibly end up yelling at each other, it was even odds--and that would be the end of that. 

"Thanks," Rogers said, "but no thanks." He smiled at Tony. It was a nice smile; Tony wouldn't mind seeing it more often. 

"Okay, so I'll--wait. You said no?" 

"Is that really so surprising?" He raised an eyebrow. "You've helped me a lot figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing here, but we don't exactly have much in common." That was more or less what Tony had been thinking, but he still didn't like hearing it. 

"We probably have more in common than me and half the people I've gone out with in the past decade," Tony said.

There was a brief pause. "That's kind of sad, Stark. Still no." Rogers was still smiling. "But this way, you can tell the kids you tried, you were shot down, and they should back off and let you nurse your wounds in peace, right?" 

"Right," Tony agreed. "That's definitely a solution." 

It was even a really good solution. It settled the entire question, and probably meant they'd be reluctant to try something this dumb again, especially if Tony pretended to be hurt by the rejection. 

Which, of course, he wasn't. Stung a little, maybe. Definitely surprised. He'd been almost looking forward to that boring and bland evening of making conversation with Steve Rogers over dinner, which was a sign that he'd been spending way too much time writing lesson plans and trying to find job placements for his seniors, and way too little time having a personal life. If _Rogers_ looked good--in more than a purely physical sense, because of course Rogers looked good that way--then he really needed to get out more. 

Because it wasn't like he'd been seriously contemplating getting involved with Rogers. (Okay, if, at some point on that boring date he'd had planned, Rogers had been inclined to--just as an example that had certainly _never_ previously crossed Tony's mind--shove him up against a wall and fuck him, Tony probably wouldn't have said no. But that wasn't a sign of actual interest in Rogers. Anyone who said they hadn't considered that was either prepubescent, not into men, or dumb as a box of hammers. Tony was none of those things.) 

He wasn't actually disappointed that Rogers had said no. It was the right thing to do, even. This was just his ego talking, and Tony was old enough to have learned that listening to his ego when it was feeling bruised led him to do really stupid shit. 

"It's a great solution," he said when he realized that Rogers still hadn't said anything else. "Thanks for getting me off the hook."

"Any time," Rogers said. 

"I've got to run," Tony went on. "I need to swing by the auto parts store on my way home. A couple of my seniors were horsing around and managed to smash the headlight on the project car, so I need to get a new one for them to install." 

"Yeah, okay. Have a good weekend." 

"You too. See you Monday," Tony said, because that was the way you talked to a colleague that you hadn't just totally embarrassed yourself in front of. 

He was way too damn old to have ever considered "listening to sixteen-year-olds" as a valid strategy.

****

What the hell was he thinking? Tony wondered on Monday morning, as he unlocked the door to his classroom, juggling his bag and the cardboard tray holding two cups of coffee from the coffee shop just down the road from his place.

He'd walked out of here Friday afternoon feeling relieved that this entire ridiculous episode in his life was soon to be behind him. Well, mostly relieved. A little bit--no, he hadn't been disappointed. A little embarrassed, definitely, because he still couldn't believe he'd let himself be infected with the same insanity that had gripped the kids, but not disappointed. Rogers might be hot, but there were other hot guys out there, guys who were a lot more compatible with Tony. 

The guy was an art teacher, for God's sake. What did Tony have in common with an artist? He taught kids how to fix cars (and blenders, and vacuum cleaners, and lawnmowers) for a living. Before that, he'd worked on race cars. (And before that, he'd gone to MIT, granted, which was nothing anyone could sneeze at, but he'd done that because it was fun, because his father expected it of him, and because it then gave him the grounds to say, "Okay, I did what you wanted, now I'm fucking off to do my own thing.") 

Rogers had been in the army, and then he went to college and studied art, and now he taught kids how to draw pictures of bowls of fruit and the difference between Monet and Manet. 

Probably not a lot of common ground between the two of them, and that was aside from the fact that a lot of their interactions involved yelling: about Tony storing his crap in the art room for the past several years, about Tony's music, about the fact that Tony turned a blind eye to the kids who smoked in the little triangle of grass between their extension and the rest of the Industrial Arts Building (not because Tony thought smoking was great, but because he knew how to pick his damn battles, and Wade Wilson and Jack Hammer--he refused to call the kid "Weasel" even if he could see the resemblance--were showing up to class at least seven days out of ten this semester, an unprecedented level of attendance, and he didn't want to fuck that up).

So there was absolutely no reason for him to be disappointed that Steve Rogers had turned him down. He'd only asked the guy out because it seemed like the best way to end this farce, anyway, and in hindsight, there were probably better ways he could have done that. 

And yet, here he was, with a second coffee because it was the first thing he'd thought of as a way to get things between him and Rogers on a better footing. He wasn't used to trying to win guys over; in general, if a guy wasn't interested, Tony just moved on. But he and Rogers were going to have to work together at least until June, probably for the next three years. Maybe longer if the grant funding the art program got renewed. So getting things back on a friendly but professional footing seemed like the best plan.

And coffee was safe and uncontroversial. He knew Rogers drank coffee. He knew the nearest coffeepot was in the faculty lounge in the main building, at least now that Tony's Keurig had been disassembled by a freshman who had gotten a little too enthusiastic when they'd been taking apart various small appliances (blenders, mixers, _not_ Tony's coffeemaker) to look at the motors. It had turned out to be so thoroughly disassembled that Tony couldn't get it working again, and he hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. 

So bringing in coffee was a reasonable first step. 

Tony set down his stuff and turned on his music; it was still thirty minutes before the first buses arrived, so he had time to check the tool inventory that he'd ignored on Friday in favor of making an ass of himself. And if he left the music loud enough, he wouldn't even have to hover out in the hall checking to see if Rogers had arrived at work, because Rogers would come in to tell him off about the noise. 

Which he did, about five minutes later, although "telling him off" wasn't exactly a fair description of it. Rogers just stuck his head in the room and said, "Can you turn it down a little?" 

Tony looked up from where he was counting socket wrenches and made himself grin. "No problem," he said, reaching over to adjust the volume. "Hey, I picked you up a cup of coffee this morning when I got mine," he added. "You know, just to show there's no hard feelings about Friday afternoon." 

Rogers looked at him doubtfully. "You didn't have to do that." 

He shrugged. "It's no big deal. White, no sugar, right?" Rogers had been in here often enough before the untimely demise of Tony's coffeemaker that he'd remembered how the guy took his coffee without even trying--probably because there was a box of individual cups of shelf-stable half & half next to the defunct Keurig, not because he'd been paying attention.

"Yeah." Now he looked even more doubtful. 

"It's on the desk. Go on, get it out of here before I accidentally drink it instead of the good stuff." 

Rogers went to the desk and got the cup, shaking his head. "I know, I know, 'Black, like nature intended.'" He took a drink of his coffee. "Now is probably not the time to mention that I'm not a big coffee drinker. I mean, yes, I drink it, obviously--and thanks for this, I've got a kid coming in five minutes to take a makeup quiz in Art Appreciation and I wouldn't have had time to go to the main building--but just because a 7:30 start is bad enough _with_ caffeine." 

"It's a good thing you turned me down," Tony said. "Blasphemy like that is one of my few deal breakers."

****

That Monday morning set the tone for the next couple of weeks. Tony bought another coffeemaker (and took the old one home because he was going to figure out what the hell Lafayette had done to it, dammit), mostly because life was too short to either _not_ drink coffee or drink the sludge from the faculty lounge. He still brought in two cups from his favorite coffee shop every couple of days, though, both because it was better and because he figured it really couldn't hurt to have Steve Rogers start thinking of him as a nice, considerate guy.

Not if he was actually going to try to win him over, which, God help him, he was going to. 

Maybe it was just because his personal life was going through a drought. After the last guy he'd met online who had turned out, in person, to be obnoxiously condescending about Tony's job--he'd actually brought out, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach"; Tony was just glad it was _after_ they'd had sex, so that he could suggest that in that case, maybe the guy might want to consider offering blowjob lessons--he had temporarily given up. 

Okay, maybe on paper, "high school shop teacher and former dirt track crew chief" didn't look like a stellar resume. The same guys who turned up their noses at that would probably be all over him if they knew about Tony's trust fund, though, let alone what he'd be inheriting one of these days. Which was exactly why Tony didn't tell them, of course, because fuck them. 

At least he was pretty sure Rogers hadn't rejected him because he thought Tony was too broke to be a decent boyfriend. He'd rejected Tony because he thought Tony was an idiot and an asshole and not actually serious about wanting to date him, all of which were not entirely unfair conclusions to draw. 

He could work with that. He'd worked with worse. 

And at least the kids were mostly leaving him alone. Well, about Rogers, anyway--they were their usual occasionally-annoying selves. He'd told them that he'd asked Rogers out and been shot down; Ned had actually gone next door to check his story with Rogers before coming back and shrugging at the others. "Mr. Rogers says that's what happened," he said. "So come on, MJ, how about focusing on finding me a date instead?" 

He had no idea whether or not MJ and Peter had ever gotten around to finding Ned a date, but after two weeks, he felt better about the likelihood that they'd given up on finding _him_ one.

At least, they'd given up as long as they didn't realize that _he_ was still hoping to get Rogers to go out with him, at least once. More than once, maybe, if the first time went okay. It wasn't going to be a romance for the ages, probably, since Rogers didn't seem to like him all that much, but a short-lived fling wouldn't kill either of them and might help Tony's bruised ego recover. 

Today, he'd had to run to the parts store during his free period; he'd opted to go right at the start, while Rogers was still teaching, and to stop off at a sandwich shop on his way back. That was his normal routine when he went off campus--their sandwiches were better than the cafeteria or the ones he brought from home--but what wasn't normal was that before he'd ordered his usual, he'd studied the menu board, trying to remember what he'd seen Rogers bring for lunch to give him some kind of idea of what Rogers might want. 

In the end, he went for a turkey sandwich. He was sure Rogers wasn't a vegetarian, and turkey seemed like a fairly safe choice. A bag of plain chips and a bottle of water also struck him as being pretty uncontroversial. On a whim, he had the cashier throw in a couple of chocolate-chip cookies. Not such a big gesture that Rogers would be suspicious of it, but if he was trying to convince Rogers that he wasn't a jackass, he figured a cookie wouldn't hurt. 

The bell hadn't rung for the second lunch period--the one Rogers had--yet by the time Tony got back to school, so after he put the spark plugs away in the correct drawer and the bag of sandwiches on his desk, he went out into the hall and stood by Rogers' door for a little while, listening. It didn't sound like Rogers was lecturing--the windows in all the doors were covered these days, part of the school's precautions in case there was someone with a gun roaming the halls, so he couldn't see inside--so Tony knocked quietly at the door.

Rogers answered after a minute or so, and behind him Tony could see students busily cleaning up their work spaces. "What can I do for you?" he asked, almost looking like he wasn't irritated to see Tony standing there. 

"It's what I can do for you," Tony said, "and that's save you from the bologna sandwiches in the bag-lunch line in the cafeteria. There's lunch for you in my room." He kept his voice low, not wanting the kids to overhear. "No big deal, I was picking something up for myself and realized I couldn't enjoy my lunch watching you eat another one of those sad things." 

Rogers' smile might have had a lot of surprise behind it, but it was still a smile. "Thanks, Stark. I appreciate it. What do I owe--" 

Tony interrupted him. "Nothing. Don't worry about it." 

Rogers looked like he was going to argue, but then a kid called out, "Mr. Rogers, where are the extra paper towels?" and the conversation ended. 

Tony went back to his room, finished setting up for his next class, and then got his own lunch out and settled down at his desk just as the bell rang. It only took a couple of minutes before the usual suspects started trickling in--nobody hung out in his room during the first lunch period this semester, and he had a group of seven or eight regulars during third lunch, but it was just Peter and his friends during this lunch period. At least Tony's attempts to convince Rogers that he was, in fact, good boyfriend material would only be witnessed by three kids. Unfortunately, it was _those_ three kids. 

"Hey, Mr. Stark," Peter said, taking a seat at a table further back in the room than where they usually ate lunch. "Big trig exam next period. Gotta study!" Ned and Michelle followed him in a minute or so later, both waving at him in greeting before heading back to join Peter, who already had his textbook out. 

They were quizzing each other about trig identities, usually with their mouths full, when Rogers came in. "Thanks for getting lunch for me," he began.

Tony coughed, nodding frantically toward the study group, all of whom had apparently stopped finding trig interesting the moment Rogers walked into the room. 

"Hey, kids," Rogers said, pulling a chair up to Tony's desk. "Anyway, like I was saying, thanks for picking up lunch for me. Maybe it was pushy of me to ask you to get something for me while you were out..." 

Okay, that was a _very_ unsubtle wink there, Rogers. It was a good thing he was turned so that only Tony could see it. 

Still, it was a decent cover. The kids' interference had been what had fucked things up for Tony the first time he asked Steve out. He didn't want it to happen a second time. _You're a terrible liar,_ he scribbled on a notepad, shoving it toward Steve. 

Steve grabbed a pen from the cracked coffee mug on Tony's desk and wrote an answer in neat, angular script. _You're welcome._

Tony just shook his head, grinning. Not like he actually owed Rogers any thanks for getting them out of a situation they wouldn't have been in if he kept his mouth shut, but he didn't feel like arguing. He just passed the bag with Steve's lunch in it over to him. "You forgot to tell me what you wanted, though," he said, "so I hope turkey's okay." 

"Turkey's fine," Steve said, taking a big bite. "Oh wow," he said once he'd chewed and swallowed, "this is so much better than cafeteria food. Thanks again." 

Tony shrugged. "No problem. I'm usually out and about twice a week or so." Between trips to the auto parts store, and visits to some of the local garages--to check up on kids on work experience, arrange part-time jobs for some of his seniors, and invite some of the mechanics to come and talk to his classes--Tony usually had some reason to leave during his free period.

They ate lunch in near-silence for a while--only "near" because every now and then, the study group in the corner got loud, when one of them disagreed with the others about the correct solution to a problem, but it was pretty close compared to the usual chatter. 

That was fine; Tony didn't have to talk all the time. Well, okay, almost all the time, but he was eating lunch, and his mother had put forth a lot of effort to teach him not to talk with his mouth full. Besides, Tony kept feeling the temptation to flirt, and that was a bad idea for so many reasons, starting with getting the kids interested in his love life again being the last thing he needed, and ending with it being way too soon to flirt with Rogers if he wanted to convince the guy that he was legitimately interested in him. 

But once Rogers had finished his lunch and deposited the wrappers in Tony's trash can, apparently, it was time for conversation. "So, there was an email about midterm grade reports?"

"Was there? I should probably look at my email more than once every two weeks." That wasn't exactly true. Tony looked at his school inbox at least once a day. Messages directly from colleagues, students, parents--that stuff, he read. The emails from the administration, or worse yet, the board of education office, to the entire faculty? Those, he let sit for as long as possible. If Fury didn't come down to yell at him personally, it probably wasn't all that important to begin with. 

He glanced at the calendar. "Yeah, we're about halfway into the grading period, so midterm reports it is. What about them?"

"What do I _do_?" 

Tony shrugged. "Figure up their grades as of now, put them into the computer, add comments. There are a lot of pre-set comments like 'should try harder' and 'not living up to potential' to choose from, but you can also just leave your own." Like the one to Wade Wilson's foster mother that was going to say something akin to "is coming to class nearly all the time!" Potentially with a smiley face. Or the one he always left on Peter's report on the theme of "I have no idea what he's doing in my class, but I enjoy teaching him."

Steve sighed. "I should probably start grading things, huh?"

Tony blinked at him. "You haven't graded anything?" 

He shrugged. "Sort of? I mean, in Art History and Art Appreciation, it's easy. Those are normal classes. And I give some quizzes in the studio classes, and those are graded. But how am I supposed to grade their artwork? Participation? Following directions? Talent? Because at least one of the most talented kids I teach is also the laziest, and then there are kids who do everything I ask and work hard at it, but aren't all that good. Maybe they can be, if they keep working, but they aren't now." 

Tony grinned. "My life is so much easier. If they do what I tell them and the car gets fixed, they get an A." It wasn't quite as simple as that, but still, there was something objective to go by. Was the problem fixed, or the part installed the right way? 

"That doesn't help me much." 

"Guess not. But look, nobody expects grades in art class to be a hundred percent objective. You'll be fine. What did you do in student teaching?" 

"Taught five sections of art appreciation." He shrugged. "I'll figure something out, though." 

"If you want to work on your grades in here after school, I can help if you have questions. You know, like the kind of comments to leave if you don't want angry parents out for your blood, and when to give the benefit of the doubt and find that extra half-point to add to someone's grade." 

Rogers smiled at him. No. Rogers _beamed_ at him, happy and grateful, and Tony heard klaxons going off in his head. _Red alert. This is not a drill. You actually_ like _this guy, possibly even a little too much._ "That'd be great, Stark. Tony," he amended. "I'd appreciate it." 

Tony made himself shrug. "No problem, R-- uh, Steve." 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Parker leaning over and whispering something to the other two kids. _God damn it._

Still, he'd asked Rogers--Steve--out, and he'd been shot down, and as far as the kids were concerned, Tony was going to keep insisting that was that. 

And as far as he, himself, was concerned, well, if he was finding it harder to believe that this was all about his bruised ego, he was just going to have to deal with that, possibly via denial and repression if things didn't go his way.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, as some of you have figured out, I'm a teacher (retired due to health reasons, but once a teacher, always a teacher). And I pestered one of my former colleagues for some details. (I told him the truth: I was writing a romance where the main character taught auto shop! I just didn't mention the "big queer superheroes" aspect of it.) 
> 
>  
> 
> **Next week:** Tony and Steve have a lunch not-a-date, and Steve's car is terrifyingly bad. (Also, the author projects their feelings about teacher inservice days.)


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Steve have a lunch not-a-date, and Steve's car is terrifyingly bad. (Also, the author projects their feelings about teacher inservice days onto Iron Man.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks to everybody who's reading! We're at the halfway point now. (This fic has been completely written, and the last couple of chapters are fairly far along in the editing process, so the number of chapters is definite and I should, barring some sort of emergency, be able to keep up my posting schedule.)

****

Tony's Auto Mechanics II class met the last hour of the day, which meant that Peter was hanging around asking him questions about the day's work and about the robotics competition when Steve came in with his grade book and a digital camera.

"Oh," Peter said, "I guess you're kind of busy now, huh?"

"A little bit," Tony said. "If you have questions about what we covered in class, I've got all the time in the world. If they're about the robotics team, save them for our meeting tomorrow afternoon, okay?" 

He nodded a greeting to Steve, who nodded back and went over to the corner to make himself a cup of coffee. Or maybe he'd noticed that Tony had bought a box of tea and one of hot chocolate to fit his coffee maker, since Steve said he didn't really like coffee. 

"Okay," the kid agreed. "I'm probably going to have a lot more questions about this stuff tomorrow, once I go home and look some stuff up in my physics book, anyway." 

"You're in physics this year? I thought juniors take chemistry." 

Parker looked down at his shoes. "We do. But I got some old college physics textbooks at the Friends of the Library sale last spring. I wanted to know stuff, and I didn't want to have to wait to senior year." 

"Good for you," Tony said. "And sure, fire away. Or email me the questions so I have time to think about the answers before we talk." It wasn't strictly in the curriculum, but there was no way Tony was going to discourage a kid from being curious about the underlying principles behind the internal combustion engine. 

Parker looked up again, grinning. "Really? That's awesome. Thanks, Mr. Stark!" He turned to go, greeting Steve as he hurried past him into the hall. 

Steve set his mug--well, Tony's extra mug, but Tony hadn't ever kept a second mug in his classroom before this year--down at his usual corner of Tony's desk, then pulled up a chair. "I didn't interrupt anything, did I? If you need to work with him--"

Tony shook his head. "Nah, he's good. He's just doing some extra research, apparently." 

Steve sat down, grinning at Tony. "Looks like somebody's got a crush." He took a drink of whatever was in his mug--it smelled like tea; good, he had seen it. 

Tony was about to engage in strenuous denial (crush? Who had a crush? There were no crushes here, and he wasn't watching the way Steve's throat rippled as he swallowed, or the way he licked a stray drop of liquid off his upper lip, either) when his brain finally kicked into gear. "Oh, _Peter_ ," he said. "You think, really?"

Steve snorted. "Yeah, I think, really. What, you hadn't noticed?"

Tony shrugged. "Not noticing is a habit you probably want to develop sooner rather than later. You're relatively young and not _hideously_ ugly. There will be crushes. I mean, tell me you didn't have a crush on anyone older when you were a teenager." 

"Okay," Steve said, "fair enough. I definitely did. So you ignore them?"

"Best way of handling it. I mean, if the kid crosses the line, you have to say something, but if they're just making goo-goo eyes at you and hanging on your every word--and probably drawing hearts around your name in their notebook--it's better to just pretend you have no idea. Spares the kid a lot of embarrassment, for one thing, not to mention it's a lot safer for you. Goes along with keeping the door open if you're alone with a kid, or with just a couple of kids, and locking down your social media." 

Okay, Tony had a blog where he wrote about restoring old cars, and that, he didn't take any steps to hide from his students. But he never talked about anything there other than cars--absolutely nothing personal--so that was different. 

Steve took another drink of his tea. "It's kind of surprising that you'd say that," he said. "Considering that the kids say that you're willing to answer their questions about a lot of stuff we're probably not supposed to talk to them about." 

"Fair," Tony said. "We're probably not. But I'm not going to let them get pregnant because they believed some urban legend about Coca-Cola douches, and I'm not going to let them get a DUI or kill someone because they think black coffee magically counteracts alcohol, and I'm damn well not going to let them think there's something wrong with them because they're not straight." 

He realized he'd been getting steadily louder as he talked, and made a conscious effort to lower his voice. "But I don't let it get personal. I don't tell them about _my_ sex life, or my experiences drinking, and while it's not a secret on campus that I'm bisexual, I also don't announce it in class."

"Isn't that kind of a fine line?"

"Spare me the concern," Tony muttered. "I'm not going to bullshit them, and I'm not going to let them ruin their lives because they couldn't get a straight answer from an adult and they believed the wrong crap from the internet." 

"No!" Steve said quickly. "I wasn't criticizing you. I was just--I don't know, impressed? I'd be afraid that I'd say too much, or get too personal, and wind up in over my head." 

Tony took a couple of deep breaths. "Sorry. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions. And this is my eighth year teaching, so I've had a while to feel my way to this point. I was a lot more careful my first year. Besides, I don't _need_ this job," he admitted. "If I get fired, I have some options I can count on. I've got a couple of friends who'd make a space for me on their pit crews, for one thing." For another, he could go back and work for his father, but that was a much less tempting option, even if it was more secure. 

"NASCAR?"

"Not quite. Dirt-track racing." He wasn't surprised at Steve's guess; NASCAR was the only auto racing most people around there had ever heard of. 

"That's quite a change from teaching." 

Tony shrugged. "I used to race." He hadn't set the racing world on fire, and he hadn't done it for all that long; he was happier on a crew, and even happier in the classroom. But he could think of a couple of pit crews that would find a place for him, if he needed to. 

"Why did you leave? I mean, if it's not too personal." 

Tony shook his head. "It's not. I'm just not getting any younger, and I wanted more stability in my life." And he'd wanted it without going to work for the family business. Teaching gave him that, and had the advantage of still irritating the hell out of his father. Teaching, at least for men, was for losers who couldn't hack it in the corporate world, in Howard Stark's opinion. 

Tony could hack it; he just didn't want to. "What about you? Why'd you leave the army?" 

Steve shrugged. "I joined so that I could afford college. I never planned to make a career of it; I always wanted to do this." He frowned down at his grade book and sighed. "And now I'm not sure I know what I'm doing." 

"You and all the rest of us." Tony logged into the grade-reporting application on the school network and then turned back to Steve. "What's the problem?" 

Steve shrugged. "What I was talking about before. Assigning grades to artwork. I could just give everyone an A if they do the assignments, but that doesn't seem right, either." 

"What's the camera for?" 

"I take pictures of their work. I should have uploaded them to my computer and sorted them out by student, but--" He shrugged. "I'll know better from now on. Anyway, I've done the classes that have normal tests and assignments. I'd appreciate it if you'd look over the comments before I submit the grade report, though, just to let me know if I'm letting myself in for trouble I didn't intend." 

"Did you intend any trouble?" 

"I've got a couple of kids who obviously took Art Appreciation with the idea that they wouldn't have to do any work to pass, and they're going to find out they're wrong. They're seniors, so..." Another shrug. 

"Yeah, okay, that's the kind of trouble you can't avoid. You can't cut them slack if they're not doing anything." Well, sometimes Tony did, but that was when he knew there was something going on with a kid, not just because they wanted an easy A. 

"But what do I do about something like this?" Steve put the memory card from the camera into the slot on his laptop, opened up a folder, and clicked on a file. He turned the screen so Tony could see better; it was a blobby, confusing mess of a painting. 

"I don't know, but if 'give it to Tony for Christmas' is one of your options, seriously, please don't," he said. 

"The kid who painted this followed every instruction. She's just..." 

"Awful?" 

"That's a little harsh." 

"Is she better than she was the first day of school?"

"Maybe a little." 

"So she follows your instructions and she's getting better."

"Yeah. And I'm thinking that might be what I need to look at."

Tony sighed. "It'll make your life easier. Every year, I get at least one kid who takes until Christmas to figure out which end of the wrench is which, and technically, I should probably flunk them. But if they're trying and they're getting less incompetent, I give them at least a B. Those kids aren't going out there to get jobs as mechanics, usually. This kid isn't going to go into art as a career, I suspect." 

"No, I think she needs an art credit to be eligible for some summer honors program. 

"So give her the B, or whatever you decide, and leave it at that. Save the crappy grades for the kids who don't even try to do what you ask them." 

"Yeah, but is that _right_?" 

"Damned if I know. You've read the curriculum standards, right?" Not that Tony tended to admit that he'd read them--well, he obviously hadn't read the art standards, anyway. 

"Of course. It's not like I didn't have to painstakingly correlate every single thing I did in student teaching to the state curriculum." 

"Ugh, I don't miss that. But is there anything in those standards that say something like 'student will produce a painting that isn't butt-ugly'?"

"Of course not." 

"There you go. You're still teaching to the curriculum." Tony started entering grades for his morning section of Small Engine Repair into the computer. "Don't angst about it so much. You'll drive yourself into an early grave, or at least to burning out and signing up at the temp agency downtown like so many of our former colleagues." 

Steve laughed. "You have a good point."

They settled in to work. Steve occasionally asked Tony a question about the grade-report program, or Tony tried not to rant about how inefficient, outdated, and generally useless it was, but most of the conversation was casual and not actually related to what they were doing. They talked about their students--both their favorites and their least favorites--about their colleagues, about the town, and a lot of other relatively uncontroversial topics. Things got a little heated when they started arguing about movies, but that was Tony's fault; he never had quite mastered the art of staying calm when someone was being wrong about _Star Wars_ at him.

It was one of the most pleasant afternoons Tony had ever spent doing grade reports, he had to admit. Pleasant enough that he didn't notice the lengthening of the shadows, or the change in the light coming through the windows; it was only the knock on his door from the janitor that called his attention to how late it was getting. 

"I'm leaving," she said. "Don't forget to lock your door when you let yourselves out." Since Tony's classroom had to have an outside entrance that a car could be driven through, the cleaning staff could lock up the rest of the building and leave Tony working in here. They frequently did, too, especially when he'd driven one of his own projects over to get it up on the lift. 

"Sure thing," Tony called, waving at her. "We're just finishing up here." 

Steve frowned. "It's almost six o'clock?" 

"Yeah," Tony said. "Time flies when you're--not really having any fun at all, I guess, since grading was involved." 

"Oh, I don't know," Steve said. The smile he gave Tony was warm and--friendly, Tony reminded himself, not flirtatious. Just friendly. "It wasn't so bad. The company helped." 

"Are you done?"

"Not quite," he said, "but there's just the grades from Art History to put in, and I've already done those." 

"Go ahead and finish up," Tony said. "I'm going to make sure everything's cleaned up and put away, and get the coffeemaker set up for tomorrow morning. That way, tomorrow when everyone else is scrambling to get their grades in, we'll be the only two people on campus who aren't stressed out." 

"Everyone else leaves it to the last minute?"

"Not everyone," he acknowledged. "There are a couple of overachievers. But usually, yeah." He didn't mention that he was normally one of the teachers who left it so late that Fury generally came down to his classroom in person to ask Tony if he was going to feel like doing his job today. And wouldn't he be surprised when Tony's name wasn't on the list of teachers who hadn't submitted their midterm reports, Tony thought with a smile. 

"Okay, thanks." Steve went back to work, and Tony did what he said, rinsing out their cups in the sink and filling the reservoir in the coffee maker--Tony always felt lucky that his subject matter meant that hand-washing facilities were provided in his room, so he didn't have to keep running back and forth to the drinking fountain or the bathroom for water. He put away a few tools, noting where they'd been left so that he could keep an eye out to see which kids from which class period had neglected their clean-up responsibilities.

He was packing up his bag to go home when Steve closed the lid of his laptop. "All set." 

"Great. Look, do you have plans for dinner? There's a pizza place out on Route 1 that's really surprisingly good, and I was going to head out there." 

The fact that Steve didn't answer right away was probably enough of an answer, to be honest, but Tony still waited to hear what Steve said. 

In the end it was, "I really should be getting home."

And of course he should. Hell, maybe there was someone waiting for him, even though he'd never said anything that would suggest there was. And if he was expected at home, surely he'd be making a call to explain that he'd lost track of time? 

But then Steve smiled and said, "Another time, maybe?" and Tony had to remind himself that there was a definite possibility that Steve was just being polite. 

"I just might hold you to that," he said, and was relieved to see that Steve's smile didn't waver.

****

"I brought you some coffee," Steve said, sliding into the chair next to Tony's in the cafeteria. They--by which he meant the entire combined faculties of the four elementary schools and two middle schools in the district, as well as the high school--were all gathered here for what Hill (Fury was conveniently in a meeting with the superintendent that morning) and the principal from one of the elementary schools had described as an "exciting workshop that will revolutionize your classroom," and which therefore any sensible person would describe as "a day full of boring bullshit punctuated with corny team-building exercises."

They'd already had a presenter talking about a new approach to cooperative learning (as far as Tony could tell, it was exactly the same as the old approach to cooperative learning, with some new buzzwords thrown in) and one trying to get them "fired up"--her exact words--about "literacy building in the content areas." 

Tony had halfway paid attention to that one, since for obvious reasons, his classes attracted a lot of what the presenter called "reluctant readers"--in other words, kids who were way behind grade level without any obvious explanation for it. But it had turned out to be just the same old crap they always heard, so he'd tuned it out again. 

The next presenter--Tony glanced at the agenda handout they'd been given and groaned; mind mapping again? Really?--was a few minutes late, and everyone had taken that opportunity to visit the bathrooms, chat with friends from other schools, and get coffee from the huge urns the PTA had set up. (The doughnuts from the IGA bakery had vanished before 8:30 AM, predictably. Underpay a bunch of people, promise them a "work day" and then take the whole thing up with pointless workshops, and then turn them loose on free food, and "plague of locusts" was the most accurate description. The sugar would help them stay awake, if nothing else.)

Tony's "keep himself awake" plans had involved surreptitiously screwing around on his phone, scribbling notes on a legal pad to try to make Steve laugh, trying not to laugh at the doodles Steve was making on his _own_ legal pad, and in general attempting to ignore everything any of the workshop presenters had to say. 

Oh, and coffee. Even if the stuff from the PTA urns only barely qualified, and he didn't have the time to go down to his classroom to get a decent cup. 

"I've already got some," Tony said; he'd refilled his cup first thing, while Steve was talking to someone Tony thought was probably one of the elementary school art teachers. 

"Oh," Steve said. "I should have thought of that." 

He looked--well, not disappointed. That would be an overreaction. But… maybe a little like he felt dumb for bringing Tony coffee when he had a cup in front of him, and Tony was not really about making Steve feel dumb for being nice to him. 

"No problem," Tony said, picking up the small styrofoam cup and gulping down the bitter brew. "Turns out I was ready for a refill." He grinned at Steve. 

"So, I was thinking," Steve said. "That pizza place you mentioned--you know, the night we stayed late doing midterm grades?"

Tony nodded. "I know I'm older than you," he said, grinning, "but I'm not losing my memory yet. It was only about ten days ago." 

"Are they open for lunch?" 

"Yeah, of course."

"We've got an hour and a half for lunch," Steve said. 

"Really? We usually only get an hour at these things." And honestly, even with the time it took to get back and forth to wherever they were going to eat, an hour seemed like a long break to a group of people used to having to eat lunch in about fifteen minutes.

"Yeah, but I heard Ms. Hill saying they're taking the presenters out to the country club to eat, and that's a couple of miles out on the other side of town. So we get a long lunch today. And I was thinking, that should be plenty of time to go and get a pizza, right?"

"Sure," Tony said. And then, before he got too enthusiastic, he added, "I can fit five people in my car, legally. Four if they don't want to get too friendly." They usually went out in groups on work days, and it wasn't that Tony minded that; he genuinely enjoyed it, especially since he tended to keep to himself a lot during normal school days. He just didn't want to go into it expecting lunch with Steve, and finding out it was lunch with Steve and half a dozen of their colleagues. 

"Nah," Steve said. "I'm pretty sure we're all going to be really sick of one another after all the team-building stuff this afternoon. Just the two of us? We can eat, we can stop by the auto parts store and you can help me get the right wiper blades for my car, we can put them on…"

Tony laughed. "I see. Buttering me up with pizza before you make me help you with auto maintenance."

"You got me," Steve agreed. 

"Well, I'm not falling for it," Tony said, glowering at Steve just long enough that he was sure Steve was wondering if Tony really was annoyed with him. "I also expect garlic bread."

"Yeah, Tony, I think we can manage that." 

"With cheese." 

"You drive a hard bargain," Steve said. "Now hush. I think the woman in the denim jumper is our next presenter. Time to play 'I'm interested.'" 

"I hate that game," Tony muttered, but flipped his legal pad over to a clean page. 

To be honest, the woman in the jumper wasn't that terrible. Sure, none of her ideas seemed to have any place whatsoever in any of Tony's classes, and probably not in most of Steve's, either, since they were all about alternatives to lecturing as a mode of content delivery. (The irony of every single presenter who had ever told Tony that lecturing was ineffective and old-fashioned, in a workshop that was ninety percent lecture, had never been wasted on him.) 

But she was mildly engaging, she didn't make them do any cheesy getting-to-know-you exercises, and Tony texted Rhodey a couple of times and answered an email from his mother (Yes, he was doing fine. Yes, he still liked teaching. No, he wasn't coming home for the holidays, and she knew why), then spent the rest of her talk watching Steve doodle cartoon versions of the administrators, a group of math teachers, and then Tony himself--arms wrapped lovingly around a mug of coffee significantly larger than his body.

_You can get me one of those for Christmas,_ Tony wrote, grinning. 

_I was thinking of your own IV drip_ , was Steve's reply. 

And then it was the lunch break. "Your car or mine?" Steve asked, and ordinarily there wouldn't be any question about it at all. Steve's car was Tony's worst nightmare. Tony didn't even know how it was still running; it was a Chevette from the mid-1970s, in the most hideous shade of dark orange (polka-dotted with rust) Tony had ever seen. Steve had proudly announced that he'd bought it for two hundred bucks, and that it was incredibly cheap to insure, and Tony believed both of those things. 

"Were you serious about the wiper blades?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "My car's old enough I'm always doubtful when I buy parts for it. They never mention it on the package."

"Then your car," Tony said, with an exaggerated shudder. "And may God have mercy on our souls."

Steve snorted. "It's not that bad. And I needed something to get me back and forth to work before we got our first paycheck." 

"So you'll be replacing this soon?"

"When it dies. I'm not going to just abandon it because I can afford something better. Besides, it's not like I can afford something that much better." 

Tony thought about his everyday car--as opposed to the project cars that he generally restored, drove for a while, and then sold to someone else who'd appreciate Tony's babies the way he did, to make room for the next project--and, for a moment, felt guilty. But it wasn't like not spending it would change the fact that he had money. And he _liked_ his convertible. Steve would look good in the passenger seat, he thought. 

Steve almost managed to look good crammed behind the steering wheel of the Chevette. For once, Tony was grateful that his legs weren't all that long; it made it a lot more comfortable to fit into the crappy compact car. 

"Out on Route One, you said?" 

"Yeah, heading east out of town."

"That's probably why I've never noticed it." There was a lot of nothing on the east side of town; mostly strings of smaller towns, interspersed with farmland and trees, for at least fifty miles. Unless you really needed to get to the interstate--and you usually didn't, since it was about seventy-five miles away--it was easy to just never find yourself heading in that direction. 

"Yeah, you won't be able to miss it. It doesn't really have a sign, unless they've put one up since school started, but it's the only place that doesn't have cows out front." 

There were quite a few cars in the parking lot of Saralynn's Pizza and More when they pulled up. Tony recognized a few of them from the faculty parking lot. He wasn't disappointed, not really. This wasn't actually a date, and if they wound up sitting with some of their co-workers, that would be okay. They'd still have a good lunch, and this would still demonstrate that his attempt to prove to Steve that he really was a good guy who'd be worth giving a chance was working. Working slowly, maybe, but still working. 

But when a harried middle-aged woman appeared to show them to their seats, Steve asked if they could get something in the back, away from the main paths to the lunch buffet. "We're going to order off the menu, I think," he said, with an inquiring glance at Tony. 

"Definitely," he agreed. "They never have cheese bread on the buffet, and you owe me." 

The hostess showed them to a table some distance away from either of the large groups of teachers Tony spotted and handed them a couple of laminated menus. 

"You seem to have strong opinions about what you want from here," Steve said, "so how about you order?" 

"Okay. Anything you absolutely hate?"

"Not really. I'd prefer a normal pizza--no white sauce, no pesto, no holding the cheese because it's healthier. But I was in the army, and then I was in college and eating a lot of ramen noodles and canned soup. I'll eat just about anything." 

Tony grinned. "Saralynn's doesn't know what pesto is," he said. "You can't really get anything that isn't 'normal pizza.'" When their server came over, he placed their order for pizza and bread, and then looked at Steve. "Pitcher of soda okay? I usually get beer, but not in the middle of the workday." 

"Yeah, great." 

Their order completed, Tony turned to a much more important topic. "Your car," he pronounced, "should be in the ICU."

"That bad?" 

"It doesn't sound good," Tony said. "I'd have to get under the hood to see exactly what's going on there--you need your tires balanced, definitely, and I'd get your struts checked out based on the way it rides. But in addition to that, I'd be prepared for some repairs coming up pretty soon. It may turn out to be cheaper to just buy another piece of crap and sell the Chevy for parts." 

Steve grimaced. "I need it to hold out until after Christmas," he said. "I didn't spend a lot on furnishing my apartment, and I'm paying it off as fast as I can, but I'm not going to have much spare cash until January." 

It was almost Halloween, so that meant two, two-and-a-half months. "It _might_ make it," Tony said. "But it's going to require a lot of luck."

"We'll just have to cross our fingers, then," said Steve.

"I'll do what I can," Tony offered. "And when you're ready to get the next car, I'll come with you to check it out. I mean, if you need someone to look it over." He didn't want to imply that an art teacher couldn't know anything about cars, but the fact that Steve wasn't confident about buying wiper blades unless his make and model were printed on the package did suggest that he might need a little help. 

"I couldn't ask you for that," Steve said. "I mean, if you do anything to my car, I'll pay you for it, obviously, since this is your job--"

Tony held up a hand. "Fixing cars isn't my job. Fixing cars is my hobby. Teaching teenagers how to fix cars without damaging the car, themselves, or their classmates is my job." He smiled at Steve. "If it's minor, I'll be happy to fix your car. And I'll definitely be glad to look over anything you want to buy to make sure it'll run."

"Thanks," Steve said. "You've just been so helpful with work so far, and I know you hate having me in the classroom next to you--"

"No, I don't," Tony said. "I got pissy when you blocked the hall that first day, but I like having you here. First off, I like having an art program. It's good for the kids. And secondly, I like having someone next door again. It's lonely down there. I mean, I can always go to the teacher's lounge, but what with having half the riff-raff of the student body invading my classroom at lunch--"

"Which you love," Steve interjected. 

"Which, okay, I may encourage and not exactly hate. But it does mean I used to spend most of the day not seeing another adult. And I could have someone a lot worse than you next door, too."

Steve smiled. "Okay. I just know we really got off on the wrong foot, and then all of that nonsense with the kids trying to set us up…" 

Tony concealed his urge to wince. "Yeah, that wasn't one of my finest hours," he agreed. "But they've stopped that now." Mostly, anyway. 

"Good," said Steve. "They don't really grasp the idea that adults might want to keep their personal and work lives separate."

"They don't really grasp that we have lives away from school," Tony points out. "They're not stunned when they see me at the grocery store or the pharmacy, but I've run into kids at the movies and they look at me like I've grown an extra head." And that was completely leaving out the times that he'd run into kids in places they had no business being for a few more years. 

Steve grinned at him. "No, you've just got the two you normally have."

"You're lucky our food's not here yet," Tony said, "or I'd be throwing a piece of bread at you. And I hate wasting food like that." 

"It wouldn't be wasted," Steve argued. "I'd eat it." 

"After it smacked into your face?" 

A snort. "Like I wouldn't catch it." 

"Oh, it is on," Tony said. "I am so going to be throwing things at you when you least expect it." 

Steve smiled again, this time very smugly. "You can try," he offered, which was the kind of challenge Tony couldn't back down from if he wanted to.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next week:** Steve finds out what Tony does for fun.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve finds out what Tony does for fun (no, it's not Steve), and Tony's favorite student asks the tough questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, everyone, for the comments, kudos, or just for reading this thing. <3!

****

"Mr. Stark," Peter said, stopping on his way into class, "can I ask you a question?"

"Class starts in three minutes," Tony said, leaning back against the painted cinder-block wall. If he stood over here instead of in the doorway to his classroom, he could not only get a good view of what was going on in his classroom and in the hallway, but he could see what was going on in the art room as well. 

Which would be helpful, he told himself, if Steve needed to run to the photocopier or the bathroom or something, and Tony needed to watch both classes for a minute. That was the reason it was a good thing. 

"It's not about class, though," Peter said. "It's kind of personal." 

"No," Tony said. 

"No, I can't ask you?"

"No, I don't think MJ is ever going to go out with you," he clarified. In the interest of professionalism, he didn't add, "but I'd bet my next paycheck that Ned would," even though he was tempted to see what would happen if he did.

Peter flushed. "I wasn't going to ask you that," he said. "I just wondered why you'd moved over here. You always used to stand outside the doorway. Until this year." The kid gave him an impish smile. "And gee, I wonder what might have changed this year that might want to make you stand over here where you can see right into the art room, where Mr. Rogers is setting up the easels for the painting class." 

"It's easier to see into the shop this way," Tony explained. "I can see what you little monsters are doing in there." 

"So it has absolutely nothing to do with being able to check Mr. Rogers out without him noticing?" 

Tony scowled at him. "Answering that question would be extremely unprofessional of me." It had a lot to do with that, but also to do with his ongoing attempts to hit Steve with a ball of crumpled paper. So far, he was being held back by his feeling that waiting until Steve's back was turned and he didn't know Tony was even in the vicinity would be cheating. 

That just provoked a whoop of laughter. "Mr. Stark, you told us last week that we shouldn't drink until we turn twenty-one, but if we were going to do it anyway, we needed to pace ourselves and make sure we ate first, and alternated booze with water or soda, so we didn't put ourselves in the hospital."

"And that was very good advice," Tony said. 

"Yeah, but it's also 'extremely unprofessional of you,' isn't it? You're supposed to stop with the 'don't drink' part."

Of course the kid was right, damn him, but Tony wasn't about to tell him that. "You're on thin ice here." 

"So refusing to answer basically tells me that you really are standing out here in the hallway like this because it lets you look at Mr. Rogers in those jeans." Jeans weren't normally in the faculty dress code; even Tony didn't wear them most of the time, and he probably could have gotten away with it. But on Fridays they were allowed to wear shirts in the school colors--fortunately, red and black, so it was possible to not look like a complete idiot while displaying spirit--and jeans. 

This year, Tony had really learned to appreciate Fridays. 

He was also learning to appreciate where that old-fashioned expression "a nosy parker" had come from. Clearly, some clairvoyant had predicted Peter. "That's inappropriate," Tony said. "And I warned you not to go there. I think that's a detention." 

Parker looked stricken. He wasn't a perfect kid, and he'd probably wound up in detention a time or two, but he'd never gotten in any trouble with Tony, except the occasional admonishment to stop talking and get to work. "It's Friday," Peter said. "There's an away game. I can't stay after school; the band bus leaves at two-thirty." 

"I guess it's going to have to be Monday, then," Tony said. Which, to be honest, was his intention in the first place; he was just waiting for the kid to figure it out. 

"But we have the robotics team meeting on Monday after school," he protested.

"And where does that meet?" Tony prompted. 

"In your room, now that Mr. Rogers has the art room."

"So on Monday, by 3:15, I want you in my classroom for detention. And if it turns out that there happens to be a meeting that you want to take part in, I guess I can't stop you from chiming in." Tony grinned when he saw the look of relief on Peter's face. 

"You're a good kid, so I don't think I need to turn this in to Mr. Coulson's office, do I?" Phil Coulson was the assistant principal in charge of disciplinary matters, and technically, kids with detention were supposed to be reported to him. Hardly anyone did that, though, unless the kids' behavior problems were bad enough that they expected to have to escalate things up to the administration. Detention for being a smart-ass wasn't in that category, at least not in Tony's book. 

"How long is detention?" Peter asked. "Because we have to be on the field for band practice at 4:15."

"Until 4," Tony said. That was when the robotics meeting would be wrapping up, anyway, and Tony was going to want to go home. Besides, he didn't want Peter to get in trouble with the band director. 

"Okay," he said. "I guess I have no choice but to show up for detention. Since I'm such a terrible discipline problem." He grinned at Tony.

"You're a pain in the neck," Tony said, "but I think you've learned your lesson." 

"Yeah," he agreed. "Don't tease Mr. Stark about his crush on the art teacher. Lesson learned." The tardy bell rang, and Peter shot forward into the classroom, dropping into his chair just before Tony made it into the room. 

Tony rolled his eyes. God, teenagers were going to be the death of him. He didn't know how anyone survived _raising_ them. At least he could go home and lock them all out; their families had no such luck.

****

"Tony?" Steve called.

"Over here." Tony came out from underneath the car he'd had up on the lift, reaching for a rag to wipe his hands clean on. Clean-ish, anyway. "What's up? Turn the music down if it's too loud for you." 

Tony had been looking forward to a peaceful Wednesday afternoon--no kids coming in to do makeup work, no robotics team, no detention--working on his car. He'd driven the Cougar to school--it was safe enough to drive now, even if Tony wasn't quite done with the restoration, and then there'd be all the body work to do--because he didn't have the space in his garage to install a lift. Anyway, any time he needed one, he could always do this. One of the advantages of teaching auto shop. 

But he couldn't really bring himself to resent the interruption, not when it was Steve. To tell the truth, even though Tony wasn't entirely sure that this slow flirtation with Steve was getting him anywhere at all, he couldn't regret it. It was going to suck if Steve wasn't interested--Tony had given up pretending, at least to himself, that this had much of anything to do with his ego's response to objection, or that he was expecting a single, boring, date just to prove a point. 

No, Tony was willing to admit--at least, as he'd said, to himself, though he was pretty sure that the last time he'd talked to Rhodey, he'd said as much to him as well--that he was really starting to like Steve Rogers. 

But even if this didn't go anywhere, and he really wasn't sure that it would, at the very least, he was getting to know Steve a lot better, and that wasn't a bad thing. Having a friend--not a friendly colleague, but an actual friend--at work could make things a lot more pleasant. 

The volume of Tony's music dropped a few notches. "Nothing. I just dropped by to use your coffeemaker and kill a few minutes. What are you doing?" 

Tony looked from himself--he'd taken off his button-down shirt and was only wearing a t-shirt with a streak of grease across it--to the car up on the lift, and then back down to himself. "Working on a car?" he deadpanned. 

"No kidding," Steve said. "I meant, that's not the car that's usually in here." 

No, the current classroom car was a ten-year-old dark blue Nissan, not Tony's current love: a '68 Mercury Cougar. "No, this is my car," he said. "And I need to get it up on the lift, which I don't exactly have in my garage at home, so I drove it to school today." 

"You weren't kidding when you said fixing cars was your hobby, huh." Steve was giving him a weird look, and Tony wondered if the realization was hitting him that for all his brains--and Tony knew he had them--Tony was happiest as a greasemonkey. Give him an engine to fix--and maybe improve while he was at it--and a well-stocked toolbox, and he was content. 

That realization had killed off more than one budding relationship, but at least it was better to get it out of the way now.

"Really, no," Tony said. "I like restoring cars."

"But you don't drive an old car."

He shrugged. "I do sometimes. I just haven't lately. Ordinarily, I keep one or two of them around for myself, but this time someone made me an offer for the last one I restored, and it was too good to turn down." 

Not that the money made that much difference. It was the way the woman's face had lit up as she told him all about how her dad had driven a GTO just like the one Tony had, right down to the color of the interior, and how she'd been looking for one ever since her dad had died of cancer a few years back. Tony'd taken what she offered him for it without haggling--it was a fair price--and everything above what he'd sunk into the car had gone out the next day in a check written to a cancer charity. But there was no reason to tell Steve what a sap he could be if you caught him in the right mood. 

"This one," he went on, "I'm hoping to keep around for a while." 

"Kind of… big, isn't it?" 

"It'd suit you better than that Hot Wheels you're driving, but yeah. It's not small." He grinned. "And if you tell me my love of muscle cars is compensation for something, I'm throwing a wrench at you." 

Steve grinned. "Would I say such a thing?"

"No, but I wouldn't put it past you to think it." 

Steve was still giving him that weird look, but he seemed a little more at ease than he had a few minutes previously. "Anyway. I didn't want anything important. I'll make myself that coffee, if you don't mind--"

"I restocked the tea supply yesterday."

"Nah, I want the caffeine. But anyway, I'll let you get on with your work. I just didn't have anything that absolutely has to get done this afternoon, and I felt like killing a little time." 

"You don't have to go," Tony said. "I need to keep working so I can drive home, but I don't mind company." 

"I won't be interrupting?" 

"You can help," he said. That'd be a good way to find out whether Steve could take any interest at all in what Tony was doing. He didn't expect or need someone he was dating to be as interested in cars as he was, but he did want someone whose eyes didn't glaze over when Tony talked about his hobby. (Tony would be the first to admit that he hadn't always been willing to reciprocate with that, but hell, that was also a sign that he and those other people hadn't been right for one another, wasn't it? He hadn't ever had a problem listening to Steve.) 

"I can check my oil, add washer fluid, and put gas in my tank. Oh, and I know how to change a flat tire. Not sure how much help I'm going to be." 

"You can hand me tools?" Tony suggested. "You're not really dressed for this, otherwise. And you can act impressed by how very manly and hot I look working on a car." 

He'd just thrown that in as a joke, but apparently he'd gone a little too far for Steve, because while the weird look was completely gone, Steve now looked kind of stricken.

"Oh. Uh. I guess I can do that. Hand you tools, I mean. The other--"

"Is entirely optional," Tony assured him, and told himself he didn't feel disappointed at all. 

"I can do that," Steve repeated. "What do you need?" 

"That wrench over there, on top of the toolbox." It was the one Tony had been using before Steve came in and interrupted him, so he was sure Steve would pick up the right one. 

"Wrench," Steve repeated, like an OR nurse on TV, and put it in Tony's hand. 

Shit. Tony wanted to close his fingers around Steve's--anything to prolong that brief contact. What the fuck was he doing? If he got his heart broken because he'd tried to seduce Steve Rogers just to prove he could--well, he was going to blame his students, definitely, but in general, he was going to be really damn annoyed at the universe. 

And Steve was just looking at him funny again, like he was studying Tony and not really sure what he was looking at. Like Tony was some weird bacterial culture under a microscope, or something. "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it," levels of looking-at-him-funny. 

"Thanks," he made himself say, and then got back to work. He didn't feel like walking home, and he wasn't sure he could stand the humiliation of getting a ride home in Steve's car, so he needed to get this done. 

To his surprise, it didn't take all that long for things to get back to normal. Tony kept up a running narration of everything he was doing, and Steve asked questions that did reveal that he didn't know a damn thing about cars (but at least he was trying), and after ten minutes or so, even the times when he had to ask Steve to get him a different tool weren't fraught with the strange sexual tension that Tony had probably invented in his head--and if he hadn't, it was probably one-sided, anyway. 

"You don't really have to keep helping," Tony said. "You can pull up a chair and talk to me while I work." 

"That's pretty much what I'm doing anyway," Steve pointed out. "It's not like handing you different-sized wrenches is all that helpful. I'm mostly just watching you work." 

"Well, feel free to do it any time," Tony said. "I like the company."

"I don't want to be a nuisance." 

"You're not. I mean, maybe it'd be a nuisance if I watched you paint--"

"I don't paint," Steve said. "Or, I do, but only because I teach painting classes. I don't paint for fun."

"Okay, if I watched you draw. I know you do that for fun; I've seen you." He'd watched Steve doing it pretty often--those little cartoons showed up in the middle of Steve's notes from every faculty meeting and in-service workshop they'd had so far this year. Mostly not as detailed as they'd been the day he'd sketched Tony with a human-sized coffee mug, but still, drawings, and Steve hadn't minded that Tony had watched him do that. But maybe little cartoon doodles weren't the same as "real" drawing, in Steve's mind. 

Steve nodded. "Yeah, okay."

"Okay, maybe it'd bug you to have me hanging around while you're trying to draw--"

"It wouldn't."

"Stop interrupting me while I'm trying to make a point. _Maybe_ it would bug you, and maybe it wouldn't, but this isn't anything like that. I got started helping my best friend fix the old junker he bought when we were teenagers, and I've worked on pit crews. I don't mind having people around when I work, and I don't mind them talking to me. If something's tricky and I need quiet for a minute, do you really think I'd have trouble telling you to shut up for a minute?"

Steve laughed. "No, I guess not."

"So, go if you're sick of hanging around here, but I've got about another half an hour to go, and I'd appreciate the company."

Steve was quiet for a minute, and Tony focused on tightening the bolt he was working on, not letting himself think about what that meant. About whether it meant that Steve was trying to think of a polite way to say, "Now that you mention it, I really am sick of this." 

Then he heard a scraping noise, and when he looked, discovered that Steve had dragged a nearby chair into a convenient position for handing over tools and watching Tony work. 

"I've got a free half-hour," Steve said, and Tony found himself grinning up into the Cougar's undercarriage.

****

"I thought I was the one who brought the coffee," Tony said when Steve walked in and set the cardboard drink tray down on the desk.

"I figured it was my turn," said Steve. "Large black Americano, right?" 

On one hand, they'd had coffee together often enough that it shouldn't have been surprising that Steve knew what he bought. On the other, Tony usually bought the coffee and brought it in, and there was no reason to think that Steve would have ever noticed what was in the cup that wasn't his. 

"Right," Tony said. "That's perfect, thanks." He took the indicated cup from the carrier and sniffed at it appreciatively before taking a sip. 

Steve gave him a sheepish grin. "I described you to the barista and asked for what you usually got."

"Still perfect," Tony insisted. "And so is your timing. I was just about to make myself a coffee when you came in." It was actually earlier than Steve usually got to school, or at least came down to his classroom. For all Tony knew, since Steve frequently parked in the faculty lot on the other side of the school, he could get here at seven a.m. most days and just spend over an hour in the main faculty lounge chatting to people. 

Tony couldn't do that. Definitely not early in the morning. He managed civil conversation when he had morning bus or cafeteria duty, but usually he remained holed up in his classroom, getting himself sufficiently caffeinated to be able to deal with his homeroom kids. He had ninth graders this year, which meant overactive mouths, equally overactive hormones, and not an ounce of common sense among them. There really wasn't enough coffee in the world, but he could try, at least. 

"Good," Steve said. "That's why I'm early. I didn't want this to get cold while you finished your first cup." He took his own cup and perched on the edge of Tony's desk. "So, what did you think about that email we got about 'unauthorized use of the book room'?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "Somebody didn't get their key back from the kid they sent to go get something out of storage, and somebody else caught the kid in there. My money's on 'not alone,' since that's usually what happens. We get one of those memos every year, because every year, someone's an idiot." Usually someone who'd been teaching long enough to know better. Tony trusted his kids, but he also knew they were teenagers, and Tony had been enough of a dumbass as a teenager to assume that "dumbass" was a normal condition for high school kids. 

"I haven't seen a memo about students smoking in the annex parking lot," Steve said. 

"That's because no one has caught them but us." "Parking lot" was a pretty grandiose description of the paved area between the wing that housed Tony's and Steve's classrooms and the rest of the Industrial Arts building. A couple of parking spaces, plus enough driveway to get the project cars in and out, even if they had to be towed. "And I haven't turned them in." 

Steve bristled. "Neither have I. I mean, I still don't think we should let them, but--"

"But they'll get suspended, and then they'll go back to skipping nine-tenths of their classes, and we'll be stuck with them forever, or at least until they turn twenty-one and have to go to adult education." 

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "I know. You're right." 

Tony was just about to compliment Steve on finally working out that he was _always_ right when a kid stuck her head through the door. 

"Oh, there you are, Mr. Rogers. I've been waiting in your room for five minutes." 

Crap. It was Michelle Jones again. 

"Was I supposed to meet you, MJ?" Steve asked, hopping down from Tony's desk. "I'm sorry, I must have forgotten."

"No, I just have some questions," she said. "Your door was unlocked and open, so I figured you'd be right back, but then when you weren't… I should've known you'd be in here." 

Jones wasn't a giggler; Tony had to admit that. But if she had been, he was sure she'd have been giggling at both of them right about now. 

"Don't start that again," he muttered. "Or I might have to start locking my room during lunch."

"You'd _never_ ," she said cheerfully. "You'd miss us all too much. And what am I starting? You guys do spend a lot of time together. Teachers are allowed to be friends, right? With each other, I mean. I know you're not allowed to be friends with us, which is bad luck for you." 

"Go and wait for me in my room," Steve said. "I'll be there in a minute." 

"Thanks, Mr. R," she said, though she didn't actually leave. 

"Go away, Jones," Tony growled, and now she did laugh as she went back into the hall. 

"Sorry about that, Tony. I hope that doesn't mean they're going to start all that up again." 

Tony shrugged. "It won't kill us if they do. I can always remind them that you broke my heart the last time I asked you out, anyway. Lay the guilt on thick enough, and maybe they'll give it up altogether." 

Not that _he'd_ give it up, but he wasn't about to tell Steve that yet.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next week:** Steve's car is doomed, but maybe Steve and Tony aren't? (It's the next-to-last chapter; _something_ has to happen!)


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's car is doomed, but maybe Steve and Tony aren't?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearing the end now! Not that this was a very slow burn, given the relative shortness of the fic, but still, you've had to be patient for a month, and Tony and Steve have had to be patient for even longer.

****

"I just needed it to hold on until January," Steve said. " _January_. It's December third. Is a month more really too much to ask?"

"What?" Tony emerged from under the hood of the Nissan; he'd been setting it up for his seniors to work on. There wasn't anything wrong with the alternator--or at least there hadn't been before Tony got to it--so he'd had to take matters into his own hands. "What happened?"

"My car," Steve groaned. "The engine died as I turned into the school driveway. I had to push it the rest of the way." He waved toward the windows. "I parked it back here because it was closer. I'll have to get someone to tow it to the garage, if you can recommend a place that won't rip me off." 

"Sure, I can do that," Tony said, "or you can pop the hood and let me take a look at it for you first. Maybe it's something I can fix for you." The school didn't have all the latest equipment, so while they covered repairs to some of the highly-computerized portions of modern cars, the kids were stuck using computer simulators. With Steve's car, though, the only reason Tony wouldn't be able to fix it was if whatever had gone wrong was beyond fixing.

"Yeah? I have to admit, I was kind of hoping you could help, but if it's too much trouble…" 

"Nah, let me figure out what's going on. Even if I wind up sending you to a garage, if I can tell them exactly what the problem is, it'll save you some money on labor." He finished up with the Maxima and followed Steve outside.

He didn't have a lot of hope that the Chevette would be salvageable, given the couple of times he'd ridden in it, but when Steve got the hood open, Tony was met with a pleasant surprise. "It's not dead." 

"It's doing a fantastic impression of it." 

"Yeah," Tony agreed. "I can see that. And it's still on its last legs, so you should still be keeping your eyes open for another, slightly less terrible, car to upgrade to. But come here and take a look." When Steve joined him, leaning over Tony's shoulder to peer under the hood, Tony pointed out a mass of tangled, broken, wiring.

"I'm going to make a prediction," Tony said, "and you tell me if I'm wrong." 

"...okay?"

"I've never been to your apartment," he continued. "Right?" 

"Right."

"You'll have to take my word for it, but I don't even know where you live. But I'm going to _guess_ that you live in those new apartments on the north side of town, the ones that back onto the county wildlife preserve."

"Wrong," said Steve. "I rent a house. Well, a guesthouse-slash-mother-in-law apartment. But it's near the wildlife preserve. How did you know?"

"Because that's the part of town where you're most likely to have this kind of problem with mice. I mean, you can get mice anywhere, but I guessed you lived there because those are cheap apartments that are halfway decent, _and_ they're near a lot of woods and a couple of cornfields, so there'd be tons of field mice." 

"Mice?" Steve repeated blankly. 

"Mice," Tony confirmed, pulling up one of the wires. "See the toothmarks? Mice chewed through your wiring."

"So you can fix it?" 

"Yeah, I can. I mean, it's likely to happen again if you park outside, but I can fix it."

"I don't have a garage," Steve said. "There's a dirt alley behind my place, and the owner said I could park there instead of on the street if I wanted."

"Parking in the street will help, but only a little," Tony said. "But this is going to be a pretty easy fix. If you don't mind, I've got a couple of kids in Mechanics III who could help me out with this. They want to go on work experience next semester, and it'll give me a good chance to make sure they're ready before I inflict them on professionals." 

Steve nodded. "That's fine. Do you need me to go and pick up parts? Second period is my planning period, so--you have that group third, right? I could walk downtown."

"No. I mean, yes, third period, but no, you don't need to go out this morning. We'll use what I have on hand, and you can replace the supplies once your car is working." Then Tony paused, considering. "I might do a few other bits of maintenance--you know, just to give you a month or two before you really do have to give up on this hunk of junk. Is that okay? I'll keep it cheap, I swear." 

"Yeah, if you see something that's about to break. Just keep in mind that I only spent two hundred bucks on this car in the first place."

"Got it." Tony lowered the hood--carefully, because he didn't trust it not to fall off if he slammed it--and followed Steve back into the classroom. "I'll try to have it driveable by the time we leave today. Otherwise, I'll give you a lift home and pick you up in the morning." 

"I don't want to be trouble," Steve protested. 

"It's only maybe three miles out of my way."

"This isn't exactly a big town," he pointed out. "Three miles is most of the length of it." 

He wasn't wrong; from Steve's part of town to Tony's house was about as far as you could go and remain inside the city limits. 

"Yeah, but it's still only three miles," Tony said. "I can spare ten minutes out of my day to drive you home if your car's not working. I'd do it for anybody here, if that makes you feel any better." 

"It does," Steve admitted. "Makes me feel less like I'm imposing." 

"Anyway," Tony said, "with any luck you'll be able to drive yourself home." 

"Here's hoping."

Tony wasn't sure if he was hoping for it or not. On the one hand, getting Steve's car fixed was a solid demonstration that Tony was a Good Guy, handy to have around the house. On the other, not being able to get it fixed today would mean he'd get to take Steve home, and maybe he could convince Steve that they should have dinner together. 

Technically, he probably wasn't supposed to have the kids help him work on a faculty member's car, but it really would be a good way to see if they were ready to unleash upon the garages that signed up to take work experience students. And besides, with a couple of extra pairs of hands, he could get the thing done quickly, and nobody would have any idea that Tony had bent the rules again. 

Especially not Steve, who would probably frown on that.

****

"You're sure I don't owe you anything for the repairs?" Steve said that afternoon, leaning against his now-functional car.

Tony handed over a piece of paper torn off a notepad. "These are the parts we used. Pick them up when you get the chance."

"I'd better do it this week," Steve said. "It's soon enough after payday that I have some spare cash." 

Tony nodded. He'd never had to get by on just his teaching salary, but still, he knew what first-year teachers' paychecks looked like. "It's not going to come to that much," he promised. 

"I'm just grateful that you could get it fixed," Steve said. "I _could_ afford to take it to a garage, but I would have ended up having to put off getting a new car until March or April, and who knows how many times this one would have broken down between now and then?"

"We could start a betting pool," Tony suggested. "My guess would be at least seven times between now and March first."

Steve grimaced. "It's that bad?"

"It's not good," he confirmed. "I didn't touch anything that wasn't a cheap fix, but if you want a list of the things that are likely to break in the next three months…" 

"I'd rather be surprised." 

"Probably for the best." Tony glanced at the time and said, "You probably want to get going. Sorry we didn't finish until after school was out." He'd had to work on it during his free period--leaving the outside door to his classroom open to keep an eye on the kids eating lunch--and one of his seniors had come back after school to help him finish up. 

"If I'd had a garage come and tow it off, do you really think it'd have been finished today?"

"Unlikely," he agreed. "But it's after four, so you're free to go." 

"Thanks again." Steve hesitated, though, with his hand on the door handle. "Hey, Tony?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember back in September when you asked me out?" 

Tony snorted. "I remember it more as 'back in September when you turned me down flat,' but yeah, I remember. Why?" 

A few more moments' hesitation before Steve said, "Do you want to go out this weekend? There are a couple of good movies playing, and we could grab dinner afterward." 

"No," Tony heard himself saying. "I mean, thanks, but somehow I don't think that's going to be a good idea." 

"Why not?"

_Yeah, Tony, why the fuck not?_ he asked himself. But he knew why not. 

"I didn't fix your car so you'd go out with me." 

Steve frowned. "I know that." 

"Do you? Because I kind of feel like you've decided that every nice thing I've done in your presence all semester has been to get you to go out with me." 

...okay, it sort of had been. At least at first. Or at the very least to convince Steve that he'd made a huge mistake turning Tony down. But now…

Tony didn't want to go out with Steve if it was because Steve felt like he _owed_ him. And Tony hadn't fixed the car because he wanted Steve to agree to go out with him. He'd fixed the car because first-year teachers were generally broke, because Steve was his friend--or at least, he thought so--and because there was something he could do to help Steve. 

Sure, he'd told himself that it was great that Steve was seeing him as a really good guy, but he hadn't been serious about that. He hadn't expected anything. Hell, he just wanted Steve to realize that no matter how things had started off between them, Tony wasn't a complete jackass. 

"I didn't mean it that way," Steve said. "Sorry if it sounded like I did." 

"It's no big deal. Look, if you want to thank me for fixing your car, you can bring in coffee and doughnuts tomorrow. But you don't even have to do that. I was glad to do it." 

Steve sighed. "Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry." 

"No need," Tony repeated. "Want me to follow you home to make sure the car runs okay? I took it around the block, but just to be on the safe side." 

"No, that's okay," Steve said, finally opening the door. "I'll call a garage if I break down. And I swear, if I do, I won't tell them you tried to fix the car first." 

" _Thank_ you," Tony said. He got along fine with the owners and employees of most of the garages in town, but that didn't mean he wanted them giving him shit for not being able to keep Steve's car running for more than forty-five minutes. 

"See you tomorrow?" 

"Where else would I be?" 

Steve got into his car and drove off. The car rattled and wheezed the way it usually did, but it kept working, at least until Steve rounded the corner at the end of the street and Tony couldn't see him any more. 

He stood with his back against the wall for a little while, arms folded, wondering why the fuck he'd turned down something he'd decided weeks ago that he really wanted. 

By the time he got too cold to keep standing around outside, he'd reached the conclusion that "just an idiot, I guess," was the only possible answer.

****

"You didn't _actually_ have to bring doughnuts." Tony might have contradicted himself by reaching into the bakery bag and pulling out a pastry before Steve even had the chance to set the bag down on Tony's desk.

"Oh, wow," he said. "Healthy!" At Steve's raised eyebrow, he grinned. "Well, it's an apple fritter. That means there's fruit in it. Or there was fruit _near_ it, anyway. That's pretty much as healthy as my diet gets." 

Steve shook his head. "I should have bought you a banana and a bottle of milk instead." 

"Don't come between a man and his deep-fried pastries," Tony warned him. "It can get ugly, and do you know how many things in here can be used as a weapon?"

"I was in the military for eight years," Steve said. "So yeah, I have a pretty decent idea." 

"Fair enough." He pushed the bag toward Steve. "Go on, take one before I eat them all." 

Steve got out a doughnut for himself and took a sip of coffee. "Actually, I kind of wanted to talk to you." 

Tony frowned. "Don't tell me that your car died again. I will _lend_ you the money to buy a less terrible one, I swear." 

"No, it's not that." Steve took a bite of his pastry, chewed for what seemed like an implausible amount of time, swallowed, then washed it down with more of his coffee. "It's about yesterday."

"That would have been about yesterday, too, since yesterday was when I fixed your car." 

"I mean it's about what I asked you yesterday."

"I told you, you don't owe me a date for being nice to you. I haven't even been all that nice." 

"I know I don't owe you; that wasn't why I asked you out. I can see how it looked that way, though. But since you told me I could pay my debt to you by bringing doughnuts, we're back on an equal footing, and I thought I might try to explain." 

Tony set his coffee down on his desk, and then pulled out a clean sheet of paper to use as a plate for his doughnut. "I'm listening," he said when Steve didn't immediately start talking. 

"Okay," Steve said. "I turned you down in September because I felt like you were only asking me out to get the kids off your back." 

"And that was perfectly reasonable," Tony said, "because that's basically what I was doing. If you'd said yes, I'd have done my best to make sure you had a good time, but I asked you out because I thought it'd be a good way to get them to shut up. There really are no hard feelings about that, at least not on my side."

"Or mine," Steve said. "But I just wanted you to understand that it wasn't because I was totally uninterested. I was at least _mildly_ interested, and if I hadn't known about the kids trying to push us together, I probably would have said yes." He paused, thinking. "I might have said yes. It depends on how much of a jerk you'd been that day." 

"Okay," Tony said. "So I went about things the wrong way if I wanted you to go out with me. It wouldn't be the first time." 

"But you _didn't_ want to go out with me; like you said, it was all about the kids being annoying. Yesterday, when you were working on the car, you just looked--anyway, it reminded me that I _had_ been a little disappointed that you'd asked me out the way you did. And I realized that you weren't likely to ask me again, so I'd have to be the one to say something. I didn't think about how it might come across." 

"But now, like you said, the slate's clean, so that's not as much of a concern?"

"Exactly." 

Tony grinned. "If you were to ask now, you know, you might get a very different answer." 

Steve rolled his eyes. "If you're going to make me go through this again just to turn me down, I swear I'm going to make you come in during your free period and model for my painting class." 

"You say that like I don't think I'd make a fantastic model," Tony said. "And I can't answer a question I haven't been asked." 

"Fine, then." Steve took a deep breath. "I know we got off on the wrong foot this fall, but I like you, and I think I'd like to get to know you better. Do you want to go out this weekend? Dinner and a movie, maybe?" 

"That sounds good," Tony said. "I have plans on Friday night, so does Saturday work?" He was leaving right after work to drive up to the city for dinner with Rhodey. He'd probably stay overnight--driving a couple of hours, late at night and after a few drinks, was a worse idea than even he could get behind--but he'd be back by the afternoon. Even if he got delayed somehow, he'd be home in plenty of time to pick Steve up. 

"Saturday's great," Steve said. "The early shows start between seven and seven-thirty, so let's say six-thirty, and we'll get dinner afterward?" 

"Yeah. Do you want to meet at the theater, or should I pick you up? Going in your car is _not_ an option," Tony said. He could feel himself grinning idiotically, but he didn't really care. 

"You can pick me up," Steve said. "Now that I know how close to death my car is, I hate taking it out at night." His grin was possibly even bigger than Tony's. 

That felt good to see. Steve was definitely not doing this out of some sense of obligation. Steve _wanted_ to go out with him. "Okay. Six-thirty. Saturday. I'll be there." He might even have the Cougar ready to go by then, he thought; it only needed a little bit of work on the interior and a good detailing. It'd be kind of nice, maybe, to pick Steve up in the car he'd helped Tony restore, even if it had just barely qualified as help. 

It was a good thing no one could read his mind. Tony didn't think he'd survive the experience if the kids ever found out what a ridiculous sap he was.

****

The rest of the week went by at a slow crawl. Tony assigned end-of-semester projects, wrote a couple of recommendations for kids who were finishing up college applications--including one of his seniors who was planning to major in automotive engineering; he couldn't be prouder of her--and pretended that he was absolutely cool, totally fine, and didn't really care if Saturday ever got there or not.

That worked out all right at school; Steve had been roped into helping with the backdrop for the winter concert, so he wasn't around to throw Tony off his game, and he was playing it cool enough that the kids didn't notice anything was going on. (Besides, most of the kids were perfectly fine and reasonable people. It was just the three that showed up for second lunch who were interfering demons straight from hell, and they weren't any weirder at him than usual. Maybe a little less so; Tony could hope that they found some stuff of their own to focus on and would leave him and Steve alone for the rest of the year.) 

Friday night, though, was a different story. He and Rhodey had known one another since they were kids, so Rhodey knew the difference between "Tony is actually cool and fine" and "Tony would like you to believe he's cool and fine." 

He only waited long enough for them to order appetizers at dinner before saying something. "Okay, Tony, what's up?" 

Tony took a few swallows of his drink. "Why does anything have to be up?" he said. 

"Because every time we've talked this week, you remind me that you have to leave right after lunch tomorrow. You know, just like you always do when you come up here unless we've made plans for the whole weekend?" 

"Oh, that." He shrugged. "Nothing big. I just have a date." 

"Good for you," Rhodey said. "You should do something other than work."

"You ought to try it," Tony said, in between sips of Scotch. Rhodey had been in the Air Force since he got out of college, but he'd retired a couple of years ago and was working for an aerospace company instead. Like Tony and the racing, he'd said that what he realized he really wanted at this point in his life was to stay in the same place for a little while--or at least, if he moved around, for it to be his decision. 

Rhodey shrugged. "Maybe. We'll see." 

He'd resisted all attempts to drag more out of him than a "we'll see"--even though Tony was damn sure that "we'll see" meant "there's something I'm not ready to tell you yet"--and Tony had been equally stubborn about not saying anything else about his date with Steve until after he found out if it was going to be a disaster, so by the time their entrees arrived, they'd moved on to more general topics of conversation. Rhodey told him what he could about the projects he was working on, and filled Tony in on how his parents and sisters were doing. Tony told him the funnier anecdotes about his students and _didn't_ mention his own family--the usual, in other words. 

Afterwards, they went back to Rhodey's place for a few more beers and a lot more conversation, and Saturday morning they went out to their usual brunch place for enough greasy fried food to soothe the worst hangover. 

But finally it was late Saturday afternoon. He'd gotten back home in plenty of time to clean the place up a little--he had Merry Maids come in once a week, so it never got that bad, but he straightened things up, took out the trash, stuck a six-pack in the fridge, and--in what he suspected was a fit of optimism--put clean sheets on his bed and made sure there was something in the kitchen he could offer an overnight guest for breakfast. 

Then he showered, got dressed, and realized he still had half an hour before he needed to leave. 

He made himself wait until quarter after six. Plenty of time even if there was what passed for traffic in a town this size, plenty of time to find the address even though he wasn't that familiar with the neighborhood Steve lived in, but even if things went smoothly, he wouldn't be sitting outside Steve's place for twenty minutes like some kind of creeper. 

And, okay, Tony did not usually put this level of thought into picking someone up for a date. Hell, Tony didn't usually volunteer to pick someone up for a date, especially not a first date. If things didn't go well, it was convenient to be able to make a quick exit without leaving his date stranded. 

But he doubted things could go all that badly with Steve. They already knew each other, after all, and even if this date didn't work out, they were going to have to keep working with one another at least until the end of the school year. Even if they decided they weren't very compatible, driving Steve home at the end of the evening wouldn't be a problem. 

He kept reminding himself that everything was going to be fine until the point where he parked outside Steve's place--small, obviously, which he'd expected from what Steve had said, but a nice little house, set far enough back from the main building that it was less like living in a guesthouse and more like having your own place--and went up to ring the doorbell. 

The fact that Steve answered the door in about ten seconds suggested that Tony hadn't been the only one who'd been impatient, or anxious, or _something_ , about tonight. 

"Hey," Tony said when Steve opened the door. "You look good." 

Oh, smooth. Tony would have cringed at his own awkwardness, except that Steve looked so damn pleased about it. And anyway, he did look good. Jeans--had he _noticed_ that Tony had been appreciating Spirit Fridays?--and a deep blue button-down shirt that made his eyes look even bluer than they usually did. Nothing overdone, nothing that screamed "I'm making an effort," just a nice, casual outfit for dinner and a movie in a small town. But he looked great, all the same. 

"Thanks," Steve said, and Tony was sure he wasn't imagining the extra color in Steve's cheeks. "So do you." 

Tony was wearing jeans as well, with a suit jacket thrown over his t-shirt. He'd debated over whether he looked like he was trying too hard, but now he was glad he hadn't talked himself out of the jacket and into one of the shirts from his weekday wardrobe. "Thanks," he said, feeling awkward. 

"Do you want to come in?" 

Tony glanced at the time. "We should probably get going. Both of the movies you talked about wanting to see start right after seven, and the lines can get pretty long on Saturdays."

"I'll just grab my jacket, then." A minute later, Steve, wearing the same jacket he wore to work most days, stepped out on to the porch and locked the door behind himself. 

When they turned to go down the three steps from Steve's porch to the yard, Steve stopped. "That's the car you were working on a while back, isn't it? The day I 'helped' you." Tony could hear the quotation marks around the word. 

"Yeah. I figured you deserved to be the first passenger I had in her." Tony unlocked Steve's door and then, since he was there already, opened it for him. 

Steve chuckled. "Being a gentleman?"

"For the moment. I make no promises for later." 

Steve just raised an eyebrow and got in the car, but he didn't seem to object to Tony's comment--which was at least fifty percent a joke, anyway--so things appeared to be off to a good start. 

Tony got in the car and started it up. They were silent the whole time Tony backed out into the alleyway and then turned onto the main street, and Tony began to wonder if maybe he'd been overly optimistic. 

"Do you have a strong opinion about which movie we see?" Steve asked then, and that was enough to get the conversational ball rolling. They debated the merits of the two action movies--one a spy thriller, and the other one science fiction--until they were pulling into the parking lot of the movie theater. 

"Right," Tony said at last, "we're here, and you have not successfully convinced me that I want to see a spy movie, so I win." He grinned over at Steve. "But because I am all about fairness and generosity, you get to decide where we sit. As long as it's not the absolute front row." 

"You're not going to insist on the back row, in a corner?" 

They got out of the car; Tony was about to remind Steve that the Mercury was too old to have power locks when he realized Steve had already locked his door. Oh, right, Steve's car was also too old to have power locks, and they probably wouldn't have worked if it had them. 

"What are we, in high school?" Tony said. "Besides, I'm not that kind of guy."

"Really?" Did Steve sound a little disappointed, or was that wishful thinking?

"Really," he confirmed. Then, leaning in a little closer to Steve as they walked, so that he could keep his voice low, he said, "Making out in a movie theater is overrated. Making you wait until after dinner, on the other hand..."

Oh, it had definitely _not_ been wishful thinking, because the smile Steve gave him in response was ever so faintly predatory.

Thank God, their minds were apparently on the same track. If this evening went well--and Tony had no reason to think that it wouldn't--Steve would be going home with him, or vice versa. 

Steve didn't lead them to the back row, but they did find themselves over to one side of the theater. The movie wasn't especially crowded; it had already been playing for a couple of weeks and hadn't been getting great reviews, so while they didn't have the theater to themselves, they were a few rows away from the rest of the audience. 

Regardless, Tony was going to behave himself at the movie. They were in a small town, and they were both teachers; they needed to set a good example. 

Well, a good-ish example, anyway. And Tony's decision was based less on setting an example and more on the fact that he wanted to make waiting until after dinner as difficult for Steve as humanly possible. Or at least to give him a preview of what he was waiting _for_. 

So once the lights went down and the previews started, Tony started making a point of brushing Steve's hand with his every time Steve reached into their shared popcorn. An old standard, of course, but there was a reason some moves were classics, after all. 

They kept that up for a while--long enough for Steve to start returning the gesture, and for Tony to turn "accidental" touches into deliberate strokes of his thumb over the palm of Steve's hand--before Steve lifted the popcorn off Tony's lap and moved it down to rest on the floor by their feet. 

"I was eating that," Tony whispered in protest. 

"Fine, you hold it, then," Steve whispered back, and pushed it into Tony's hands. His own hand came to rest on Tony's knee, fingers tracing idle patterns over the denim. 

Okay, Tony could get behind that. And if Steve found that Tony had eaten all the popcorn, well, that was the risk he'd chosen to take. 

Though the popcorn was starting to lose its appeal as Steve's fingers began working their way further up Tony's thigh. 

_We're not in high school_ , Tony reminded himself. _We are mature adult men, and a little thing like Steve feeling me up at the movies is not enough to drive me crazy_. 

And it wasn't, at least not exactly. Or maybe that was because Steve got engrossed in the movie and left his hand where it was, warm and heavy against Tony's leg, a quiet promise rather than a tease. Tony moved the popcorn back to where Steve could reach it, and they watched the rest of the movie like sensible, mature, adults--so clearly, not all the acting was on the screen at the front of the room, Tony thought.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Next week:** To no one's surprise, there is smut, fluff, and a happy ending.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut, fluff, and a happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last time, thanks to everyone who's been reading, and extra thanks to those of you who've left comments/kudos. <3 <3 <3
> 
> (And special thanks to soft_princess, without whom I probably would have given up on this fic halfway through the first draft.)

****

Even on a Saturday night, the choices for dinner at nine-thirty at night were limited, if you didn't want fast food; the way they rolled up the sidewalks at sunset was one of the things Tony still wasn't used to about living in such a small town. Better than the racing circuit, though, where he'd become far too familiar with 24-hour diners that tended to be within a quarter-mile of an interstate highway.

Limited choices made the decision easier, anyway, and so once the movie had ended, Tony drove them to the restaurant locals tended to refer to as "the Grill," because the name in front of the "Grill" part changed on a regular basis. It was "Rosie's Grill" right now, but even in the relatively short time Tony had lived here, he could remember at least three other variations on the name. 

The cook hadn't changed in all that time, though, and the food was pretty good. Nothing memorable, but decent. He'd have to take Steve in to the city one weekend, he thought. Better food, actual nightlife--not even the college town forty-five minutes up the highway, the one Tony tended to visit when he wanted to get out and meet people, really qualified as having nightlife, at least for anyone over twenty-five--and after all, Steve was an art teacher; they could go to one of the museums in the afternoon, if he wanted. Tony could pretend to have culture with the best of them. 

Right now, though, home-style cooking would have to do. "Have you been here before?" Tony asked as they opened their menus. 

"Yeah," Steve said. "Sam Wilson took me here for lunch the day I interviewed, and I've been coming here on paydays this fall. It's better than my own cooking--especially since some things just aren't worth doing for one." 

_He cooks_ , Tony thought. He was gorgeous and funny and showed signs of being a good teacher, and he drew ridiculous cartoons when he was bored, _and_ he cooked. And he seemed to like Tony. 

"Okay," Tony said, in the hope that talking would shut off the thoughts that were starting to circle around and around, stuck on variations on the theme of "He seems perfect; what's wrong with him?" "Then I won't have to tell you to skip anything actually grilled, in spite of the name."

"No," Steve agreed. "I made that mistake a couple of paydays ago. If I hadn't given up, I think I'd still be chewing that steak."

They ordered--pasta for Tony, meatloaf and potatoes for Steve--and conversation fell back into a comfortable pattern. They even managed to not talk about work the whole time. A lot of the time, yes; both of them spent too much time either at the school or thinking about it for that not to be a staple of their conversation. At least since it was both of them, Tony could hope that it wasn't boring for Steve. 

But then, after a momentary lull in conversation, Steve changed the subject. "Dirt track racing," he said. "How did that happen?"

Tony grinned. "I like to drive fast?" 

"I've noticed," he said dryly. "But millions of people drive fast and don't get into racing."

He shrugged. "I love cars. I love driving fast. I love driving, period. I'd started watching races when I was in college, and afterward… well, it was that or go home and work for my father. Which makes it sound a lot simpler than it actually was, but the point was that I'd gone to the college he wanted, and studied what he wanted--not that I minded, because I actually loved engineering--and then it was time that I got to do what I wanted."

"You studied engineering?"

"Yeah," Tony said. 

"So why didn't you go to work for a car company or something when you left racing?" 

"That was the original plan," Tony admitted. He'd even sent out a few resumes when he realized he wasn't really cut out for spending his entire life on the racing circuit. "But then somebody brought their auto shop classes to the track one day. They watched the races, and then got to hang around and talk to the pit crews. And I realized that I _liked_ that. I liked talking to the kids about racing, and showing them the car, explaining what we'd done to it, what kind of work you have to do to keep it in shape for the next race." 

He shrugged again. "So I started looking into what I'd have to do to be able to teach, and between online classes and taking a few regular ones during the off-season, I got my license. And then I got lucky. A lot of schools are cutting out vo-tech programs, just like they do art classes, but there was this one." And Nick Fury had gone to college with his father, but Tony didn't need to bring that part up. He hadn't realized it himself, or he might not have signed that first contract. 

Anyway, maybe he had gotten this job partly because of who his father was, but he was damn sure he'd kept it entirely because of who _he_ was, so it really didn't matter. 

"I always wanted to be a teacher," Steve said. "Then my mom died my last year of high school. I'd already turned eighteen, so I didn't have to go into foster care, and my best friend's parents let me live there so I could finish high school. But there was no way I could afford to go straight to college, so the military looked like a decent option." 

"I'm sorry," Tony said, though if Steve had asked, he wouldn't have been able to say exactly what he was sorry for. Sorry about Steve's mother, definitely. Sorry that Tony hadn't had that kind of worry? Sorry that the army was Steve's best bet for a college education? Just generically sorry that life could suck? 

Steve smiled. "It all worked out," he said. "I mean, the army isn't the _least_ homophobic place ever, so that was always stressful, but…" Now it was his turn to shrug. 

"I get that," Tony said. "That was another reason I left racing. No way to keep your private life completely private, not when you spend so much time around the rest of your team during racing season. And even when I was dating women, it felt crappy to have to pretend I was straight rather than bi." 

"So we wound up in the notoriously queer-friendly profession of 'small-town high school teacher.'" 

Tony laughed. "Yeah, okay, but it's really not that bad." 

"No," Steve agreed. "It hasn't been. Though I suspect part of that is that we're both stuck off where nobody notices us?"

"That and we're both good at our jobs." 

"I don't know about that," Steve said. "I feel like I don't know what I'm doing half the time." 

"Yeah, but you do. And I've seen you with the students. You're good. You're going to be a great teacher once you have a few years experience." He stopped himself from saying anything else, then, suddenly feeling awkward. That was probably condescending. He had a tendency to do that. And if it hadn't come across that way, it was too… something. Tony didn't give big emotional pep talks to anybody over the age of seventeen or so, and what made him think Steve wanted one, anyway?

He was quieter for the rest of the meal, but he thought Steve didn't really notice. He kept up his end of the conversation, anyway, just not running off at the mouth. 

And then they were out in the cold night air, Steve leaning against the side of the Cougar while Tony unlocked the door for him. 

"So," Tony said, "I guess I should drive you home?" 

Steve frowned a little, but said, "I guess so. It's too late to do anything else." 

Crap. "Let's try that question again. Should I drive you home, or would you like to see my place?" 

To his relief, Steve brightened immediately. "I thought--you went pretty quiet back there in the restaurant all of a sudden, so I thought you were trying to let me know that you had a nice enough time, but the date was over." 

"I'm not that subtle," he said, laughing. "No, I was just trying to be a little more tactful than 'my place or yours?'" 

"Yours," Steve said. "I guess my place makes more sense," he added after a second, "since you're the one with the car. But if you don't mind driving me home in the morning, I wouldn't mind getting to see where you live." 

Tony couldn't keep the grin off his face. "In the morning, huh?" 

"I meant to say, 'later,' not in the morning," Steve said quickly. "Wouldn't want to jump the gun." 

"Oh, it's jumped," he said, still grinning like an idiot. "It is thoroughly jumped. But if you play your cards right, maybe you won't want to go home until the afternoon."

****

"This is a lot nicer than my place," Steve said as Tony closed the door behind them.

Tony's house wasn't that big, really, not like the McMansions that infested this part of town. He'd bought it once he decided he was staying at this job for a while, and he'd chosen a smaller house with a big yard so that he could build the garage of his dreams--space for four cars, with plenty of room for his tools and elbow room for him to work on his restoration projects. Currently, he only had his BMW and the Mercury, but he was hoping to find something interesting to start restoring once the winter break started and he had more than a couple of minutes at a time to look around. 

But it was both bigger and nicer than Steve's guesthouse, and clearly not a rental. Tony shrugged. "I guess it's pretty obvious I don't live on a teacher's salary," he said. Was this going to make things awkward with Steve? They'd each paid their own way tonight, but if Steve had a problem with how well-off Tony was… 

"I was wondering," Steve said. "I mean, I know after the first year there's a decent raise--"

"Not that decent."

Steve grinned. "I figured."

"My parents have money. I have a trust fund. I could be noble and self-sacrificing and refuse to touch it since I don't get along with my dad, but then again, that would mean I'd have to rent an apartment and I wouldn't have space for my cars. Or money for my cars, though I also patented a couple of things I came up with when I was still involved in racing." 

He didn't usually tell anyone about his financial situation on the first date. On the other hand, Steve had probably been assuming all along that Tony was getting by on his salary from the school, maybe some extra income from doing some auto repair and selling the cars he'd restored. And he'd been fine with the idea of dating Tony then, so it wasn't like finding out Tony was a lot more well-off than that was going to be what convinced him Tony was a keeper. 

"Really?" was all Steve said. "Like what?" 

Tony's original plan had been to offer Steve a drink and see where things went, but instead they wound up on Tony's couch while Tony explained his inventions and why they made a difference to racing--"I mean, they've both been specifically forbidden in the regulations now, but before that, they were incredible," Tony admitted. "...And," he added, "I've been talking for forty-five minutes. Sorry." 

"Don't be," Steve said. "I liked it. I feel like I've learned more about you--the real you, the person and not just the teacher--in the past forty-five minutes than I have since September." 

"Is that a good thing?"

"I think so," Steve replied, and then leaned closer and kissed him. 

Tony was not a believer in fireworks. Chemistry, yeah--some people were compatible, and some weren't, even if they seemed like they should be. But he'd always dismissed analogies to fireworks and electric sparks and bolts of lightning as romantic, melodramatic bullshit. 

And if asked, he was still going to dismiss them, but that didn't mean that when Steve kissed him, he hadn't felt that electric jolt going through him. It wasn't even an especially sexy kiss, at least not at first; it was a first kiss, a careful kiss, but that didn't matter. It was _right_. 

They didn't stop with one kiss, and as they went on, the kisses got deeper, needier, more demanding. It shouldn't have surprised Tony that they both seemed to like being in control, but instead of making things unsatisfying, Tony found that he was enjoying the rivalry. Like a competition, except there was absolutely no way of losing. The worst-case scenario was that he was going to have to let Steve take the reins, and that wasn't bad at all. 

He kissed Steve again, tongue pushing past Steve's parted lips, and he found himself tugging at Steve's shirt, trying to untuck it from his jeans so that he could get his hands underneath. 

"Need some help?" Steve asked when they finally broke the kiss. Tony noted, much to his satisfaction, that Steve was breathing hard and his eyes were starting to look a little glassy. 

_I win_ , he thought, and promptly squashed the part of his brain that wondered what he'd see if he looked in a mirror. Probably much the same thing, but that just meant they _both_ won, right? 

"I wouldn't mind," he agreed, and Steve pulled back, started to unbutton his shirt. 

Tony had taken his suit jacket off when they came in; when he realized that Steve was not just pulling his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans, but taking it off, he pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it onto the back of the couch. 

Steve paused, one arm still in its sleeve, and ran a hand over Tony's chest. "A man of decisive action," he said. "I approve." 

"A man who really should finish taking his shirt off," he countered, laughing. "I wish I _could_ approve, but you should finish what you started." 

Steve rolled his eyes, but took his shirt off the rest of the way, draping it over the arm of the couch before turning back to Tony. 

Tony licked his lips; his mouth was suddenly dry, and he wasn't even going to try to pretend it wasn't because of the sight of Steve Rogers with his shirt off. The guy was impressive-looking. Tony wasn't going to deny that, hadn't even tried to deny that back when he kept telling himself that Steve was a humorless jerk. 

Then Steve was kissing him again, one hand sliding between them to caress Tony's chest and stomach, then scratch lightly over the skin. Tony shivered, turning his head slightly so that he could kiss down Steve's jaw and neck.

He kept the kisses light--no chance of any embarrassing marks on Monday--until he reached Steve's chest, then nipped at the skin stretched tight over Steve's collarbone. "Can I?" 

"Be my guest," Steve said, so Tony bit down harder, sucking at the skin to watch it flush deep red. But never mind the marks; they were irrelevant. The important thing was the noise Steve was making, the half-stifled groan coming from deep in his throat. Tony wanted more of that--no, _needed_ more of that--and without really thinking about it, he found himself straddling Steve's lap, one knee on either side of Steve's hips, trying to get close enough to make Steve keep making those sounds. 

Steve's hands settled on Tony's hips, pulling him even closer, close enough that Steve's hard cock was pressed against his stomach. 

"Even when I didn't know you--even back when I didn't _like_ you very much--I thought you were hot," Steve murmured. "That day you got me to help you with the car, I was afraid you were going to catch me staring. You look so damn good when you're working, Tony." 

Tony pulled back for a moment and grinned. "And here I was thinking you'd realized that I was forever going to be walking around with engine grease under my fingernails and a smudge of motor oil on my t-shirt, and there went all my chances with you."

"No, that was _hot_ ," Steve said. "Besides, you clean up pretty well."

"I know that, but you didn't. Not then." Then he smiled as a thought struck him. "You know, you're welcome to come over here any time and help me with whatever restoration project I have going on. You might even learn something about cars." 

"I might just slow you down."

"You're not that incompetent," Tony protested. 

"I meant the part where I keep dragging you off to make out with you." 

Tony really liked the way this conversation was going, the assumption that this would definitely be an ongoing thing between them. "We can't work all the time," he said. "Regularly-scheduled breaks would have to be a thing." 

Steve laughed, and Tony could feel it vibrating through him. "Then it sounds like a plan." 

"Good. Now that we have a plan, can we get back to what we were doing?" He bent down again, swiping his tongue over Steve's nipple. Steve's hands tightened, squeezing Tony's ass, and Tony chose to take that as approval. 

Tony kept on with what he was doing, occasionally switching sides to make sure that he wasn't neglecting any part of Steve's anatomy--except the one that was pressing into Tony's stomach, which he was ignoring on purpose. Steve kept one hand on Tony's ass, but the other roamed over Tony's back, tracing random patterns along Tony's spine, leaving a trail of warmth over his skin. 

Tony sucked Steve's nipple into his mouth, teeth scraping over the sensitive flesh, and Steve let his head fall back as he moaned. 

"God, you look good," he said, as Steve recovered enough to pull Tony into a deep kiss. 

"Is this okay?" Steve asked, and it took a moment for Tony to realize that Steve's fingers were hooked into his waistband, just at the button to his jeans. 

His jeans that were, he realized, way too tight in one particular spot. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you can do that." He lowered his head again, focusing on the other nipple this time while Steve got his jeans open and slipped his hand inside them to caress Tony through his boxer briefs. 

He didn't whimper, and he didn't push into Steve's hand, but both of those things required a lot more effort than they really should have. 

But when Steve reached into his underwear and curled his hand around Tony's cock, he did groan. "In fact, please _keep_ doing that," he said. 

Steve chuckled and took Tony's cock out, giving it a few slow strokes before loosening his grip and running his fingers along it teasingly. 

"Do you want me to--" Tony began, reaching for Steve's zipper. 

"Only if you want to," Steve said. "It's not a requirement." 

"You have no idea how much I want to." 

That got another laugh. "Pretty sure I have a clue, at least." He rubbed his thumb in circles around the head of Tony's cock, making Tony moan again. 

Tony wasted no time getting Steve's pants open, eager to get his own hands on Steve's cock. 

And _hands_ was right, because Steve was big, both long and thick enough that Tony's hand could just barely close around it. "Do you have to register that thing as a lethal weapon?" he teased. 

"It's never killed anyone yet," Steve said. 

"Operative word 'yet'?" Tony grinned and wrapped his hand around it again, starting to stroke it. "And of course it's as gorgeous as the rest of you. Could there be something about you that isn't perfect?"

"I snore," Steve offered. "And I've been known to drink milk straight out of the carton."

"I hate you," Tony muttered. "Those are barely flaws." He didn't let his newfound hatred slow him down, though; he started stroking Steve's cock, shifting his grip minutely at each of Steve's reactions until he found the way Steve liked to be touched, or a close enough facsimile for their first time. 

Steve was matching his pace, the rhythm of his hand on Tony faltering a little when Tony found a particularly sensitive spot, but always picking up again after a second or two. And this, too, was a competition both of them could win; each of them might have been trying his best to drive the other one crazy, to send him over the edge first, but how was that really a defeat?

It certainly didn't feel like one, when Tony arched up into Steve's fist, a choked cry escaping him as he came. It felt like he'd won, especially when he recovered himself enough to resume his attention to Steve's cock, hard and heavy in his hand and leaking pre-come, and before too much longer, Steve was coming too, gasping out Tony's name as he did, and then pulling Tony close against his chest when it was over. 

"So," Tony murmured after a couple of minutes enjoying the closeness, "Does that mean you're staying over tonight?" 

"I wouldn't say no," Steve agreed. Then he leaned back on the couch, pulling Tony down on top of him and kissing him again, and that was all the planning they needed for one night.

****

In hindsight, maybe it wasn't the greatest of ideas for them to show up to school together on Monday morning in one car.

Not that Steve hadn't gone home. Not quite on Sunday morning, because they'd slept too late--and then stayed in bed for a while after that--for that to happen, but on Sunday afternoon, after they'd showered and gone out to get something to eat, Tony had reluctantly dropped Steve off at his place. 

But fair enough, they both had stuff they needed to do. Tony, for example, needed to actually buy groceries, if there was going to be someone else around his place on a regular basis. He might live on cereal and microwaved grilled cheese sandwiches (toast the bread, add cheese, melt in the microwave--that had been what convinced Steve they needed to go out for brunch) but he still had hopes of impressing Steve with the notion that Tony was sometimes a functional human being. 

He'd given a lot of thought, Monday morning as he drank his coffee and got ready for the day, to whether he was going to be able to act normally around Steve at work. Probably--especially considering that his "normal" had included an awful lot of flirting--but he couldn't be quite certain. 

Then his phone had buzzed in his pocket, and he'd found a text from Steve: _It's dead again. Can you give me a ride?_ and Tony had stopped worrying about being normal and focused on getting out the door--he'd already been running later than usual when he got the text--so that he could make it over to Steve's place and then get them to work on time. 

They'd made it, but when they'd parked in Tony's usual spot, he realized for the first time that kids getting off the school buses had a really good view of that particular bit of parking lot. 

Then he realized that the kids waving at him and yelling, "Hey, Mr. Stark! Good morning, Mr. Rogers!" were, _of course_ , Michelle Jones and Peter Parker. 

"God damn it," he muttered under his breath, but waved back. So did Steve, after a moment's surprise. 

"Well, there goes any attempt at secrecy," Steve said. 

"We can tell them the truth: your car broke down and I gave you a ride. It's not like that car breaking down will surprise anyone, no matter how little they know about cars." Tony didn't want to make his personal life a big deal at school. That seemed like it could only spell trouble. 

"Are they going to believe us?" 

"Yes and no," Tony admitted. "They'll probably believe that your car is out of commission; they've seen it. Will they believe that's _all_ there is going on? Unlikely." 

"That's what I thought," Steve said, grinning. "I don't want to call a lot of attention to this--to us--at work, though. It seems unprofessional. We can go on the way we've been going, right? And keep everything else for outside school hours?" 

Tony nodded. They'd talked about that briefly yesterday, as well. "We can definitely do that." At some point, if they got really serious, that might change, but for now, it would be the most sensible plan. 

"On the other hand," Steve said as Tony unlocked the door into his classroom and let Steve go in ahead of him, "it does look like that particular cat might be out of the bag." 

"I've never been so glad those three are kind of outsiders," Tony said. "They're not likely to gossip to the whole school, because they mainly stick together." He worried about that sometimes, in terms of their social development, but in this situation, it was a definite plus.

He opened the door into the hallway so that Steve could get to his classroom, then followed Steve out into the hall because there was no reason he had to start avoiding Steve now. As long as he kept doing what he had been doing, they'd be just fine. 

"And if they're going to talk anyway," Steve said, grinning, "we might as well give them something to talk about." 

For a minute, Tony was afraid Steve was going to kiss him in the hallway. Not that the kissing would be terrible--there'd been some of that in the car on the way to school--but even he had some minimal standards of professionalism. 

But instead, Steve just went on, "So you know how you said you'd come by after school to take a look at my car?" 

"Only because you promised me dinner," Tony said. "First time's doughnuts, but the second is definitely a home-cooked meal--anything more elaborate than a frozen pizza is fine." Hell, by his cooking standards, macaroni and cheese from a box would be home-cooked. 

"Definitely," Steve agreed, "but I was thinking you might want to swing by your place before you come over. I mean, as unreliable as my car is, I might need a ride again, and it'd be a lot more convenient for you if you were already right there, ready to drive in to work with me."

Tony grinned at him. "That sounds suspiciously like you're trying to lure me into spending the night with you." 

"Is it working?" 

"Well, I'm going home after work to pack an overnight bag," he said, "so I guess so. But only if you promise to stand around for a while and admire how hot I am when I'm working on your car." 

Steve laughed. "It's a deal," he said, just as the first bell rang and students began pouring into the building.

Tony thought he ought to drop by the office before class started, find out exactly what foundation had given the school a grant for an art teacher. And maybe who had decided that art and auto shop ought to be housed together in the vo-tech annex. 

He was beginning to think he owed them a couple of thank-you letters.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it. I don't actually have any more Stony in the pipeline right now (that isn't the same thing as "I'm not going to write any more Stony"; I just don't have any that's anywhere close to being done), so while I'll probably be posting some short fic next week, it'll be a different pairing.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [on Dreamwidth](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org/) if you want to reach me off AO3.


End file.
